


Code of Character

by tb_ll57



Series: Code [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Angst, Crimes & Criminals, Everyone Has Issues, F/M, M/M, Politics, Post-Endless Waltz, Post-Series, Preventers, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:12:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 86,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3283229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>'Tell me I'm wrong and I'll stop. Tell me you're over him and I'll stop. But tell me that all you really need is to confront it and understand it and move on, and I'll believe you.'</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heero - One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the prequel series to _Code of Silence_.

September AC 205

 

 

'You're making a mistake,' Heero said.

'Okay.' Duo swigged his beer and put it down very precisely in the ring of condensation it had already marked on their table. 'I didn't tell you so you could go all grim pronouncement on me.'

'I don't know why you did tell me. You're not usually an idiot. It warrants pointing out.'

'Heero—' Duo sucked air into his cheeks, and blew it out slowly. 'All right. All right. Here's how we proceed. I appreciate the sentiment and I know it comes out of friendship, but this is my life. The end.'

'Your life to screw up.'

'Do I tell you how to live?'

'No, damn it.' Heero lifted his own beer, swallowing steadily, knowing already it wouldn't help. He metabolised it too quickly. Even if he didn't, he'd need far more than one light beer to erase tonight. He pushed the bottle aside in disgust. 'Forget it."

Duo pretended cheerfulness, smiling brightly. There were too many teeth. 'Already done.'

He wanted another beer. 'So am I supposed to get you a housewarming gift, then?'

'I could use new potholders.'

'Fine.'

'Heero.' Duo's smile became a more normal thing, a small curve of his lips. He patted Heero's wrist on the table. 'Chill,' he advised softly. 'Okay? It'll be good with Trowa. And if it's not, I can find the door.'

'After you're cut open and bleeding,' Heero muttered. Their waiter passed them with a wide and cautious berth, sensing trouble, and Heero dropped his hand rather than try to flag him down. Duo was tapping on his knee, a rapid rhythm of irritation, and staring off at the television over the bar. 'He's changed,' Heero said then. 'From the war. He's not who he was then. You know what he does now. For money.'

'Heero, cut it out. Okay? I listened to as much of this as I'm going to.'

Heero inhaled sharply, and held it. 'I'm finished.'

'Okay. Thank you.'

'I wish you happy. Both of you.'

'You're a good friend. The best friend. Even when you try to lie.'

'I'm not. Just let it go now.' He tried again to get the attention of their waiter, and gave up in frustration. 'I hope when you've been sleeping with him for longer than two weeks it will still be fresh and wonderful.'

Duo began to laugh. At first it still held annoyance, but soon it was only forgiving. He patted Heero's wrist again, and his touch lingered, warm like his grin. 'You're a sweetheart,' he said. 'But I won't tell anyone.'

It was impossible to stay angry. He didn't think Duo did it on purpose, but it was impossible, facing that, and Heero wanted to be angry. He would be angry, when Duo left, because when Duo left he'd be going home to pack his apartment and move across the city to live with Trowa Barton, of all people, of all idiotic impulses, and of the many stupid things he'd seen Duo do on nothing more than an impulse over their years of friendship, this ranked. But sometimes Duo could be bullied out of it and sometimes he was a stubborn damn fool and there was no reason Heero would see why he'd even been summoned out to dinner to be told this. Duo had to know that no-one would be thrilled about it. Trowa Barton.

Maybe it was possible to stay angry.

The bartender changed the channel on the television, switching to the debates. 'It's Quat,' Duo noted. 'I forgot he was on tonight. Shit. I meant to tape it.'

'They're posting the debates online.'

'That's true. It's exciting, right? Our golden boy is making good. Finally doing something with himself.' Duo caught Heero's look, and laughed again. 'I'm kidding. He's a doll, of course.'

'Of course.' The waiter had disappeared. Heero sat back in his chair, feeling it creak with his weight. On the television screen they were introducing the parties. Quatre was standing in with several Progressives to present the party platform. His introduction was quick to note-- of course-- that he'd once flown a Gundam in the name of colonial sovereignty. Duo didn't blink for it, but his fingers began to tap again, just the pointer and middle fingers.

'We can go,' Heero started to say, or wanted to say, but it never quite left his mouth. He must have made some noise, though, because Duo tore his eyes from the screen. He pushed his beer at Heero. Heero sipped from it, and returned it carefully to the table.

'He looks good.' Duo looped a loose lock of hair behind his ear. 'Smart. Some politicians just look dumber than a doornail, you know. I love listening to Quat talk. He doesn't talk down at you, he doesn't shout at you, he just talks smart, and-- your pager is beeping.'

He was already reaching for it. 'Yes.' It was Wufei's number. 'I need to ring him.'

'I think I saw a payphone by the john.'

'Sorry.'

'It's cool. Go.'

There was a line of women queuing by the toilets, girls really with hair piled atop their heads, eyes heavily outlined in dark colours, blues and greens shadowing their eyelids. They watched him with pursed lips as he approached them, and Heero turned a shoulder to them as he took up the pay phone. He dug in a pocket for change, sorting dimes and pennies of American currency that was only partially familiar, nine moths after coming here.

Fingers nudged his elbow. He didn't jump, but his muscles tensed as one, and he grabbed the hand that touched him, gripping hard.

It was one of the girls. Her red mouth dropped open. He eased his hold immediately, dropping his eyes in apology. 'What.'

'Fifty cents, mister,' she mumbled, and shuffled away from him as fast as he let her go.

Coins. Heero released a breath, and dropped them into the slot. He tucked the receiver to his ear, and dialled Wufei's number.

It rang only twice before Wufei answered, with typical brusqueness. _'Chang. Is it you?'_

'Me.' Heero angled his shoulder further against the women and propped an arm against the phone. The leather of his jacket creased coolly against his forehead. 'What's up?'

_'What was Duo's news?'_

'He's—' It left a wretched taste in his mouth even thinking it. 'He's moving in with Trowa. He wanted to tell us.'

 _'Trowa?'_ It was gratifying that even Wufei could be surprised. _'When did-- how did this come about? I didn't know they even spoke to the other.'_

'Apparently quite a lot more than speaking.' He scratched at the back of his head and smoothed his hair down over it. 'That's why you paged me?'

_'No. I'm downtown. We have a case.'_

'It's our night off.'

_'Tell that to the criminals.'_

There was finally a new beer waiting for him when he returned to their table, though now he couldn't drink it. He hesitated before sitting, but pulled his wallet out from his back pocket and peeled cash from the slot. Duo's eyes flicked down to it, and took the cue.

'Trouble?' he asked.

'I have work,' Heero told him. 'Someone killed a priest.'

'Dude, work on your segues. Really?'

'Yeah, really. Burned him in his car.'

Duo seemed impressed by that effort. 'Sick bastards.'

'Yeah.'

Duo propped his elbows on the table, eyes lively now that business was being discussed. 'You got a perp?'

Two beers, plus the one Duo had drunk. He left a ten, until Duo pushed it back at him with a shake of his head. That figured. Duo's typical form of apology, trying to run around cleaning up messes he hadn't actually made because he couldn't do anything about the ones he had. 'No perp,' he said. 'Not yet.'

'Wow,' Duo commented. He leaned back, folding his hands over his stomach. 'What you don't see in this city.'

'Yes,' Heero said. He traced a drop of cold water down the side of the new bottle, and wiped it away on his jeans. 'You see a lot,' he agreed. 'You see so much more on Earth than in the Colonies.'

'Do we? Maybe it feels that way. I don't know. You couldn't drag me back to L2 at gunpoint.' Duo considered him. 'You okay? You're not exactly rushing out the door.'

'Wufei's already there. He'll deal with the preliminary transfer from the local police.' He wanted to drink the beer, and it wouldn't matter, in the long run, but regulation said he shouldn't, not now that he knew there was a case. Beer never did him any benefit, anyway. It was only a tactic, a hiding blind, and it wouldn't fool Duo, who saw entirely too much, and always had. Heero peeled at the damp label with his fingernail, and said stonily, 'There've been killer cops before.'

Duo's eyebrows climbed. He chewed on his lower lip the way he did when he was thinking, but then he only shrugged and nodded his agreement. 'Lots of them. Vigilantism is an occupational hazard.'

Not asking why Heero had raised the subject. That was nice of him. Sometimes Duo was good enough not to bully his way to what he wanted, too.

'Have you seen it?' he asked instead. 'In Homicide? Or Narcotics?'

Duo nodded again. 'We just had a guy in Narc who got caught. He was on the take for, like, six years.' He rubbed his nose. 'Talk about losing your path, you know? I mean, we've got the lowest of the low, the guys who sell their own kids for another hit, and somehow he went from catching them to feeding off them. How do you do that?'

'I don't know, Duo. Maybe it was their nature all along.'

'I guess. There's definitely people who are just born bad.' Duo watched him for a long minute, a minute that ticked by in silence but for the noise of the bar, the debates on the television. Duo said, 'You shouldn't have tried to go back to L1. Space isn't for us anymore. You didn't feel at home there, and it shook you.'

Heero grimaced. 'What does that have to do with anything?'

'Doesn't it?' Duo grinned, but he looked away, and Heero did, too, scratching at his neck again. 'Well, want me to drive out with you?' Duo asked suddenly.

'Wufei's my partner.'

The instant it was out he realised how awful it sounded. Duo's face had gone still, and his eyes stayed resolutely on the television screen, as if he were actually interested in Edam Lehaye had to say about economic growth.

'I'm sorry,' Heero said.

'No, it's cool. You're right. I was just saying, you know, I would drive out.' Duo laughed. 'It's all right.'

Heero pulled the beer bottle near, to stare down into the neck of it. Pale bubbles. 'How well do you know him?'

'Know who? Wufei?' Duo laughed again, but it was uncertain now. He looked at Heero curiously. 'Against all odds, he’s a good friend. We were closer before I moved to Narc.'

'Oh.'

'I always thought he was a lot like you.'

Now it was Heero's turn to laugh. It didn't sound natural, like Duo's, didn't sound easy, and he gave it up in the space of a breath. Duo's expression softened.

'I made a funny?' he murmured.

Heero smiled grimly. 'Yeah, I guess.'

''I left my Heero-to-English dictionary at home, sweetcheeks.'

He sat back with a scowl. 'Is it that damned hard to understand me?'

'Not all the time. I'm better at it when I've had more booze.'

He stood and tucked in his chair. 'Why don't we go for a ride?'

 

**

 

'They really had to tape off three blocks?'

'They've been more cautious lately.' Heero followed the wave of the rookie who parked him near the police cars, all still running flashing lights, though sirens were silent. 'Do you see Wufei?'

'I think I spot some olive and brown up there. You have your badge with you?' Duo checked, undirected, in the glove compartment. He tossed the badge at Heero. 'You want me to stay here? I can nap in your car.'

'Come.'

'Yeah?' Duo cocked his head. 'Thanks. I'll keep my head low.'

No, he wouldn't, and they both knew it. But for some reason it made Heero feel better about a great many things.

They both had to display identification at the perimetre. Narcotics agents didn't carry badges, only cards, and the rookie who checked them in had clearly never seen that kind of card before. But for Duo it was only an opportunity to pull out the charm, to put on the show that he gave to all civilians who never knew anything about Preventers but the hot-shot pilots on camera and the scowling detectives who showed up to commandeer cases away from the hard-working local police. Duo was polite, explaining his credentials; Duo was deprecating, downplaying the miscommunication; Duo was funny, making jokes about interdepartmental crossfeeds; and the rookie was dazzled. Heero had seen it before, all the way back to the days when they'd been disguising themselves as schoolchildren while secretly they attacked their classmates' OZ parents by night. Heero was not charming, but no-one ever seemed to expect him to be. They didn't look him in the eye, or not for long.

They were finally let in under the 'crime scene' tape, and they followed the steady stream of foot traffic around the corner. From there, it was hard to miss it. It had been a car, once. Now it was a smoking wreck, the charred metal frame smouldering still. Even the building it was parked beside had been scorched. Fire suppressant almost masked the smell-- almost.

Wufei was there, wearing his uniform jacket over suit pants. He carried a notepad, his pen waving the air, inscribing something as he spoke to a policeman. He was frowning. When he spied his two friends nearing, his frown deepened.

Duo made a jaunty wave. 'Howdy, cowboy. How'd you land this level of excitement?'

'Luck,' Wufei said succinctly. 'Why are you here? Special assignment, Maxwell?'

'I was kinda in the neighbourhood.' Duo clapped him on the back, and peered around him to the car. 'You caught an interesting one. Standing upwind, I see.'

Wufei's frown transferred to Heero. 'Wouldn't you?'

Duo tossed them both a quick smile. 'I'm gonna go look.'

Wufei put up a warning finger. 'Don't. Touch. Anything.'

'Come on, Wufei,' Heero said softly. 'He knows his way around a crime scene.'

'It's okay,' Duo shrugged. 'I know he just doesn't trust anyone but his own incredibly anal self.' He ducked the grab Wufei made for him, leaving just an impression of a grin, like a Cheshire cat fading from view as he jogged ahead. Heero shook his head as Wufei slashed both hands angrily through the air.

'Why's he here?' Wufei demanded again.

'He's been in the field investigating longer than either of us,' Heero said. 'He might catch something we missed.'

'He might. Or we might be perfectly adequate to the task. Did you bring him solely to keep him away from Trowa?'

'Don't.' He put his feet in motion, crossing the pavement. The police had already marked forensic evidence with orange cones, a footprint, a broken butane lighter. He crouched over the lighter. 'This could have been here a year or more.'

'It's a well-travelled street.' Wufei pointed to security cameras installed at the corners. 'Wrong angle. It's unlikely we'll have anything covering this exact spot. Maybe the red-light camera from the intersection, but I'm guessing it's out of range.'

'Agent Scarab?' One of the policeman approached. 'The city coroner is here. You said you had special instructions for her?'

'Yes.' Wufei tapped Heero on the shoulder with his pen. 'Go mind Duo. He is not to touch anything.'

Duo stood at the car, by the driver's door-- what had been the driver's door. His posture was relaxed, one boot canted up to rest on the other, his fist in his pocket. He fidgeted with his braid, tugging at the weave just below his shoulder. 'Hey,' Heero said, just to alert him someone was near. Duo didn't look, but his finger, caught in a loop of his hair, paused momentarily.

Heero halted beside him. The corpse in the driver's seat was still recognisable as human, though all features had been destroyed by the flame. The lower jaw had fallen free. Leaning in, Heero could see it had dropped to the seat. If there was anything else in the car, it wasn't immediately obvious. The seats, plastic or leather or whatever combination it had been, were slurry now, totally gone. The dash had melted. Just the body for evidence.

'What do you think?'

Duo didn't answer right away. When he did, at last, his voice was hoarse. 'Thing, uh, burned pretty good. You thinking there was accelerant?'

'I smell something. I don't know. It could just be the vinyls in the car.'

'It's a '98 Chevy.'

'And?'

'And there were cases a few years back. Remember they called it the car bomb scare? Exploding Chevy.'

'This isn't one of those cases. It's in too good shape. Those sprayed shrapnel for a hundred feet.'

'Yeah.'

'The fire's completely contained. The wall there only melted from the heat, not direct contact.'

'He died in the fire?'

Duo's voice was odd again. Heero looked at him, but Duo's face was turned away, shadowed by the bright lights erected by the police. 'Don't know,' Heero said. 'The coroner will make the determination.'

'Anything about this case you do know? Why's it under Preventers? Do you even know if this is a murder?'

'He was under suspicion of some very unpleasant things. The logical suspect went missing a few days ago.' Wufei had walked away with the case file, but one of the detectives hovering nearby, and patently listening in, was quick to supply it when Heero turned. He passed it to Duo. Duo held it upside down and then nearly dropped it, while Heero tried to rescue it. 'Are you all right?' Heero asked.

'Yeah. No. I mean, yeah.' Duo strung his fringe behind his ears, and got the file open without loosing the pages. Heero looked about, and found Wufei prowling the street behind them, on his department mobile phone and evidently having an argument with someone on the other end of it. Wufei nearly stalked into a cop. He stopped and glared until the other man moved.

Duo rubbed his eyes and gave him back the file. 'My eyes are funky, I can't read it.'

He folded it under his arm. 'You can stop by the office if you want to look at it later.'

Wufei came striding toward them then, swinging his phone at his side. 'We're to wait for our own coroner. Duo? You saw the case file? Serial paedophile. Accused but never prosecuted-- you know the type. He was moved from parish to parish, though there was one large settlement in 193 with a family whose boy killed himself. The locals were investigating an allegation that several boys under the priest's care in an after-school programme had been victimised. Two of the boys were wards of the state. War orphans. Relocated colonials. And one of the boys disappeared two days ago.'

'He's person of interest number one,' Heero said. 'Thirteen. Old enough to fight back. And known to have a temper.'

'Yeah, well, maybe he's dead, and you're barking up the wrong tree. Thirteen is still a kid, guys.'

Wufei sighed. 'Fair enough. But we have to follow procedure. Victim he may be, but he's also the likeliest suspect. The timing alone is suspicious.'

'Yeah,' Duo said. 'Yeah. God bless the violent ones.'

'That's not funny,' Wufei retorted shortly.

'You gotta laugh or you cry, right?'

'Or be furious. They're hypocrites, the violent ones. The police were taking his case seriously. They were preparing to arrest the priest. Why do you always leap to take the victim's side? That's not our job, Duo.'

'Because preparing isn't the same as doing.' Duo cleared his throat. 'I'm gonna-- I don't feel well. I'll be right back.' That abruptly, he was leaving.

Heero faced his partner. 'What's wrong with you?'

Wufei turned on him just as coldly. 'What's wrong with you? You brought him here, to a crime scene with a dead priest? Of course he's sick. Do you ever think?'

'What does that matter--' He remembered why only slowly, and dropped his head back on his shoulders. 'L2.'

'Don't let him stand here staring at the corpse all night.' Wufei's mobile rang. 'I'm trying to get the coroner here. Drive him home and get back when you can. We'll be hours at this.'

'Fine. Yes.'

'And let him alone about Trowa.'

'Answer your phone, Wufei.'

Duo was only gone a minute. Wufei had no sooner walked off than Duo was back, carrying a bottled water, his face and hair damp. Heero studied him closely, but could identify nothing more than a slight redness of the eye that could have been just smoke exposure. His own were itchy and irritated, and he took the offer of the bottle when Duo gave it, splashing his hand and wetting his face. He dried his eyes on his sleeve.

'Sorry,' he offered tentatively. 'You okay?'

'Oh, yeah, I'm fine.' Duo smiled at him, an expression that offered no information and let nothing whatsoever in. 'Hey, one of the cops over there told me there's some junk in the trunk. Mind if I take a look at that?'

Wufei had delivered his orders. Wufei was senior partner. Wufei was also not there to see him disobey. 'Yeah, of course,' he said. 'Come on.'

Someone had propped open the boot of the car with a jack. The twisted flap and burnt-out carpet bottom made it hard to distinguish, but Heero saw what Duo did almost as quickly. Melted glass. And something that looked as if it had once been powder. Duo pulled his jersey sleeve over his finger and rubbed up a line of it. It came off black, but he sniffed it and examined it in the light. 'Well,' he said, 'you're working with Narcotics now.'

'The only reason this is a Preventers case is the colonial angle. Drugs in the trunk of a car that may or may not be connected to the dead priest may or may not have any impact on the colonial angle, and that's a pretty tenuous reason to bring in Narc.'

'Until we know for sure what is or isn't connected, you're stuck with us. God knows there's a lot of colonial hands in the drugs business.' Duo found a tissue in a pocket and carefully scrubbed his shirt of the powder. 'I'll call it in. Quick and dirty guess, it's meth. Glass means equipment, car means transport. Maybe your priest is a dump-job. Or maybe he was driving the goods and the junk blew him up. It's not exactly a stable grocery item. Either way, someone sold someone else the goods, and a lot of the sellers around here are colonial, since Parliament was so kind as to open up the borders two years ago.'

Heero touched the tip of the orange evidence cone, rocking it once and letting it go. He decided, 'I'm glad you're in on this. You see things.'

'I see me making your job harder.' Duo's mouth turned down uneasily, but then he looked at Heero and the smile returned, as if it had never gone. The real smile. 'But it's in my lap, so I can probably keep the case.'

'I don't want to hand it off entirely, but I'm amenable to a joint investigation.'

'Joint investigation, huh?' Duo mimed sinking a basketball. 'Maybe I want it all to myself.'

'It's our collar.'

Wufei was back, joining them as he finished his latest phone call. 'Give it to him if he wants it.'

Duo stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled. 'Repeat that? Never seen you give up your turf. Is this a newer, gentler Wufei? One who shares his sandbox?'

'No, it's the one who doesn't think this case is going to bring anyone anything rewarding. Take it. Homicide will ride second.'

'Sure.' Duo put out his hand, and Wufei handed off the case file. 'Wow. I think I might be sleepwalking, or something. Pinch me, Heero.'

Heero felt a little like that, too. Wufei was not looking at him, and he didn't know if that meant it was an order from above and Wufei didn't like it, or if this was some way of making Duo feel better about the crime scene-- although how could it be, making him take on a case that was bound to raise more personal ghosts? 'Just keep us in the loop,' Heero said slowly.

'I look forward to reading your reports, gents.'

'Insufferable,' Wufei said. 'Attitudinal... you knew he'd be like this, didn't you?'

'I just hate to disappoint you, Wufei.'

'I'll handle the coroner,' Wufei told them. 'The body is still Homicide's to worry about. Get a team here sometime tonight? I want these locals gone before they contaminate the crime scene walking all over the bloody thing.'

'Love you too, baby.'

Wufei left them with a soft growl. Duo laughed at his back, but quietly. Heero knocked his fist into Duo's shoulder. 'You can be such an ass,' he said.

'Ah, he likes it.'

'He didn't look happy to me.'

'I gotta be honest with you, I don't think I've ever seen him happy.' Duo turned back to the trunk. He unclipped the pen from the case file and used it to nudge at the melted glass. It broke at the lightest touch, and Duo stopped with a grimace.

'He's happy,' Heero defended his partner. 'Occasionally.'

'Must have blinked and missed it.' Duo clicked the pen at him. 'Could you give me a ride to HQ? I do need to get a team together. I'll need to check the duty roster and see who I can get.'

The trip was silent. It was still early enough, not quite ten, but the night had the stretched and weary feel of the early morning hours. He was tired in the mind, but his body knew it wasn't done yet and wouldn't relinquish the adrenaline. His fingers were locked on the steering, and he drove just a little too fast. He deliberately slowed. Duo was silent, and Duo was many things, but silent was rarely one of them. When he risked sideways glances, Duo was still, as well, staring out the windscreen, unblinking.

'What's wrong?' Heero asked him, when they came to rest at a red light. The car hummed quietly, and Heero thought of the other car, the burnt car, and its dead occupant. How Duo had looked, standing there before it. A man alone with his thoughts, the way Duo always preferred to be. Duo had his reasons, and they were his.

Duo came to life for a brief smile. It reached his eyes, but faded quickly. 'I think I'm just tired.'

They acquired a line of traffic behind them, five more cars in quick succession, two in the lane beside them that played music so loudly it penetrated even their closed windows. Heero flexed his hands on the wheel. 'It's because he was a priest, isn't it?'

'You know, I don't think it was. I don't know. Somehow that's not the part that bothers me.'

'The missing kid?'

'I don't know. I can't put my finger on it.'

'When you do... we could hash it out.'

This time, the smile stayed. 'Thanks,' Duo said. 'We will.'

'You can be quiet if you want to be.'

'I think I might have told you this already tonight, but you're a really good friend.'

The light turned green. Heero released the brake, and drove through the intersection. One of the vehicles behind them sped up and zoomed around him, brushing a little too close in his eagerness to get ahead. Heero flashed his lights, but the incident went ignored. He pulled into the right-hand lane anyway, to take an off-ramp to the highway. It was shorter than sitting through all the lights, and he didn't want to put Duo through a longer drive than necessary. Duo preferred to be busy.

Duo. Duo reached out and put his hand over Heero's, on the shift between them. It just rested there, his fingers curled warmly down over Heero's. Heero couldn't look at him, couldn't even swallow suddenly. His hand twitched, numbly.

'Sorry,' Duo mumbled. 'I didn't think.' He let go, and put his hands in his lap instead.

'No, it's okay.' Heero wet his lips. 'I don't mind.'

'Oh, hey, don't miss the exit.'

He almost did. He was going too fast to pull off, and the tyres complained shrilly as he wrenched the wheel. A horn trailed them as he pulled just wide of the barrier and took the exit for SOMA. 'Sorry,' he said tensely.

'My fault.'

He shook his head, the only answer of which he was capable. They didn't speak again as Heero bypassed Rincon Hill and turned toward Mission Street. Preventers Headquarters had become not so much a single building as a sprawl of loosely connected offices in the same neighbourhood, and when Duo had moved to Narcotics he had moved as well from the office that housed Homicide. It took conscious effort not to drive to his own office. Duo didn't make a peep to remind him.

Then, abruptly, it was over. He found parking right in front of Duo's building, and pulled into the spot. Duo coughed, and stabbed at his safety belt. 'Um,' he said. 'Thanks for the ride.'

'Yeah.' His own voice was rusty now. 'No problem. Let me know if I can help with the case. I'll be-- I'll be headed back now to help Wufei with the body. For Homicide. Unless you need a ride.'

'No, I'll catch an outgoing with one of the guys.' Duo opened his door, and the cabin lights came on, dim and orange. Duo sat looking at him, one leg out the door on the pavement below, his teeth digging into his bottom lip so hard it was white from the pressure.

He said, 'Just so you know, I didn't throw up or anything.'

Heero blinked. 'I didn't think you did.'

'Okay, it's just that I'm telling you because-- sanitation issues, or something--' Duo stopped talking, and put his hand on Heero's cheek. He leant across the shift and kissed Heero gently.

All he felt at first was confused panic. Duo was kissing him. He didn't know-- he didn't know, ever know, what it meant, except that it did mean, _mean_ , something, because it was Duo and Duo was always _meaning_ something that Heero didn't understand and that was all he ever damn well knew. But he fumbled out a hand from the wheel and was touching, was touching Duo's throat, skin that was sandpapery with stubble, making him suck in a breath, shivers breaking out over him. He sucked in a breath, and then his mind went clear and clean. He kissed Duo back. Clumsily, hungrily. Their teeth clacked. He closed his eyes.

Duo ended it. He shifted away, just turned his head away, but only enough to press their cheeks together. Heero realised his heart was beating horrifically fast. His mouth was wet from Duo's mouth. He licked his lips, and dropped his head to Duo's shoulder. The cool cotton of his shirt was a relief to the heat of his head. Duo let him rest there, let him stroke with the pad of his thumb just above the vee of his collar.

He felt Duo swallow. Duo whispered, 'I shouldn't have done that.'

His heart was just starting to slow. It skipped a beat, now, a sickly little lurch. 'Maybe. It's okay. It was-- nice.'

Duo's breath stirred his hair. 'Yeah.' That was his warning, and he sat back. Duo was slower, easing back into his own seat. The world expanded. They were in the car. His car. His left hand was still on the wheel, and Duo's door was still open to the street, and there were night noises, traffic noises and people noises, not the deaf void he'd been sitting in where all of that had vanished.

'I appreciate it,' Duo said, as if it were somehow deadly important. 'Appreciate you. Having you looking out for me.'

Heero nodded, because he didn't know what else to do. 'We, uh, have history.'

'Yes. I like our history.' Duo scrubbed suddenly at his face. 'Damn it,' he groaned. 'I'm a bastard.'

'Since when?'

'Rewind about two point five minutes.'

'I'd rather not.' His hands were damp. They'd never done that before. He dried them on his jeans. 'I mean-- I don't want to take that back.'

Duo stared at him. 'No, me neither, just-- me neither. I just shouldn't have done it.'

'You don't have to do it again.'

'I always kind of thought that if it was gonna be one of you guys, it would be you.'

He breathed. He went on breathing, must have, because he didn't die. It felt like that, though. His hands had been stone dry the night he'd self-destructed his Gundam. 'Guess you were mistaken.'

'Heero.'

'Trowa. He's more-- what you want.'

'He's just more ready, Heero.'

'Yeah.' He breathed. He was the one to lean across the seat, this time, the one to kiss Duo, this time. Less clumsily than before. More deeply. He slid his hand into Duo's hair, into the weave of the braid, to cup his jaw, to touch the whorl of his ear. Duo gripped his jacket, Duo sat still for him, let him. It was tender and sweet, not what he'd ever imagined, if he'd ever really let himself imagine it. There was heat in his belly, already dying.

He let go, and sat back. Duo caught his hand as he dropped it, but didn't stop him when he tugged away.

'I guess I'm not him.'

'You don't want to be.' Duo pushed his fringe away from his face and sighed. 'We'd get ourselves into trouble. And I want you to always be my friend.'

'Yeah.'

Duo looked at him for a long time. He thought Duo would touch him again, but the moment had passed. He didn't invite it. Duo didn't dare it. Duo pushed at his own hair again, an angry swipe, a helpless gesture. He stared out the open door.

'It's late,' Heero said. 'You should go in before shift change.'

'Okay. Right.' Duo swung his legs out. He hesitated before he rose, and hesitated again after, one arm propped on the door, looking anywhere but inside. He said, 'Good night, Heero.'

'Good night,' he echoed.

 

**

 

'That site's gonna be a bitch to clean up,' Cuartero said. 'Chem lab found contaminates thirty feet past the car. Must've been a windy night.'

'That'll be expensive,' Duo noted. He twirled a pen between two fingers. 'There go the Christmas bonuses.'

'Toxic waste,' Alvarez explained to Heero and Wufei. 'Every pound of meth produces about five or six pounds of waste. And when it explodes, it sprays. Could be a hundred, hundred fifty thousand to clean up that street.'

The Narcotics office was smaller than Homicide, considerably better appointed. Each agent sat at a fine cherry-stained desk, stocked with a sleek flat-panel computer monitors and ergonomic keyboards. Heero had been on the list for a teleconference phone pod for two years. Wufei's analogue mobile phone had been the product of strenuous negotiation, and they only had the one between them. Duo had a wireless headset and a digital camera that he was currently using to upload pictures of the meth lab from the dead priest's car.

And yet Heero and Wufei were the only two wearing suits. Cuartero had a nice leather jacket, and that was the best that could be said. Duo wore tatty blue jeans that left his knees poking out from wide tears and a faded blue tee shirt that sagged at the shoulders. He was chewing on a string of hair loose from his braid. Alvarez looked even worse than that, in a bandana and stained wife beater.

'Any leads on the drugs?' Wufei asked.

'I'm going to the Castro later to meet up with some guys who might have some information.' Duo turned his screen toward them and pointed the pen at an indistinguishable smear of black powder and sooted car trunk. 'Our lab is backed up about six weeks, so there's no way to put a rush order on anything without more than a dirtbag dead guy pushing for it, but you kind of learn your way around the residue. Could be brake fluid. Flammable and corrosive. We're not going to get any kind of brand name or anything, but we might be able to trace any bulk buys or steals. This over here was probably sodium hydroxide, and there's a little bit of plastic left in here so it looks like it was being transported separately. Honestly, I don't think our dead guy was cooking. At most, he was driving the ingredients. I think someone lit the junk and let it burn itself out. Whether the explosion killed old Father Benito or whether Benito was dead already, well, I guess we'll have to wait on the lung biopsy.'

Heero noted that in his pad. 'Lung biopsy?'

Cuartero nodded. 'If he was alive when the meth burned, he probably died from asphyxiation. Ammonia, butane, hydrochloric acid, all that shit sears the lungs bad. If he breathed it before he died, we'll know when we get the results from the coroner. If he was dead when he was dumped and the perp burned the car to cover it up, then we've got more work to do.'

'I'll tell you what, though, if he was using, our nasty priest was likelier to be an abuser,' Duo added abruptly.

Wufei's pen paused in writing. 'What?'

'Don't you read the FAQs we send the other departments? Meth use increases the risk of child abuse and domestic violence.'

'Child abuse is a bit of a walk from paedophilia,' Heero said cautiously.

'Not that much.' Duo slouched low in his seat, fiddling with the cable connecting the camera to the computer. 'All I'm saying is we shouldn't rule out a connection.'

'There was never any hint that Benito was connected to drugs,' Wufei protested slowly. He flipped his pad closed. 'Look, if anything, it's more probable it's the missing boy. You're the one who pointed out the colonial angle with the local drug rings. An orphan in an abusive situation is likelier to reach for a convenient... solution. A priest hiding a drug habit, especially an addictive one like meth, is too easily exposed to his congregation.'

'Much easier to hide a few decades of child molestation,' Alvarez muttered.

'Probably,' Heero said.

Duo's mouth was tight. 'First this kid is a murderer just because the man who's fucking him turns up dead. Now he's a meth mule because there's drugs in the car. How about we wait until we find this kid to start lynching him?'

'Duo,' Cuartero said. 'Que está bien. Tu necesita pa calarse.'

The look Duo shot him was mulish. But he listened. Wufei looked on uncomprehendingly, ignorant of Spanish or unable to follow Cuartero's thick Caracas dialect. Heero listened, and filed it away for later consideration.

Alvarez cleared his throat. 'Homicide get anything from the guy's suite in the church rectory?' he asked.

'Treasure trove of the usual disgusting type,' Wufei answered. He flipped the case file to the evidence log. 'Video tapes. Kiddie porn, mostly, although we're still plowing through it. There's a few interesting tapes in which he appears to be confessing to the camera what a monster he is. He describes his grosser acts in some details. If they'd been found while he was alive, it would have guaranteed prison time and hefty settlements from a number of his accusers.'

'It's called aversion therapy,' Heero commented. Duo was winding the cord of the camera around his finger, over and over again. He avoided Heero's eyes. 'He's supposed to watch the tapes of himself and masturbate until he associates the guilt of confession with sex.'

'Obviously not too successful,' Duo said. He scrunched his nose at the ceiling, and sighed. 'But nothing about the boys from his church.'

'Jessie Olmeda and Micco Rodelan.' Wufei nodded for permission, and went to the white board the Narcotics agents used to track their open cases. He used clips to post pictures of the two boys, and uncapped a marker to neatly etch their names beneath each slip. 'Olmeda was the first to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse. A schoolteacher noticed blood on his shorts and confronted him. When he was pressed, he admitted it had happened at the church, during the after-school programme. Not surprisingly, Benito rallied a few loyal staffers and attacked the boy's story, called him a liar, said he was disturbed. Olmeda claimed that Rodelan would substantiate his story. But Rodelan didn't trust the police, and there was some kind of altercation at the station when they brought him in for interview.'

'They dragged a thirteen-year-old kid to a police station to say all the adults are calling you another lying colonial bitch, and would you be so kind as to prove your friend's innocence while you're at it.' Duo shoved to his feet. 'It's amazing how this story never gets too old for another repeat. And they didn't think him not trusting authority figures or exhibiting unusually aggressive behaviour were classic signs of abuse?'

'Apparently not.' Wufei capped his marker and tapped it against his palm. 'They held him in juvenile lockup overnight and returned him to the orphanage. Which returned him to the church-run after-school care programme.'

'What about Olmeda? They can't have put him back there, not without investigating it further.'

'No, Olmeda's been withdrawn from the programme. He's also still at the orphanage. We've asked for an interview, but he has a lawyer now, and the woman is stalling.'

'I'll bet she is, with Benito burnt to a crisp.' Duo joined Wufei by the board, glaring up at the pictures. 'What's the timeline on Micco disappearing?'

'A full three weeks after the police heard Olmeda's allegations. And only two days before Benito turned up dead.'

Duo turned, crossing his arms over his chest. 'And the meth is really the only surprise in all of this. The meth is the only thing that doesn't make sense. So if we track the meth, we figure out who really did this. And maybe we find the kid.'

'Maybe,' Wufei said dubiously. 'And maybe the meth is a red herring, and means nothing at all.'

'We'll know when we solve the case then, won't we.' Duo pulled Rodelan's pic from the board and strode past Alvarez and grabbed his jacket from his chair. 'I'm going to head into town and start talking. The longer we sit on this the harder it's going to be to find Micco. We're already past forty-eight hours. Are the locals looking?'

'They've put out an official missing persons,' Heero said. 'But he's an orphan in a big metropolitan area. It's not a priority case.'

'Good thing we have other resources.' Duo pocketed the picture. 'I'm out. I'll check in later. Cuartero, follow up with the lab and stay on the heist angle for usual meth ingredients. I still think we're gonna get lucky if we just follow the trail of pharmacy robberies down California. Alvarez--'

'Colonial trade, cartel activity, and human trafficking,' the older agent finished, already heading for his desk. 'My favourite holy trinity.'

'God bless us, every one.' Duo cocked his head at his friends. 'Appreciate the briefing, guys. There's a nice cafeteria downstairs if you two want to grab lunch before you had back to your office. They have a good vegetarian chili.'

'Who are you going to interview?' Heero asked curiously.

'Talk to,' Duo corrected. He untucked his braid from his jacket and dropped it loose. 'Some people who run a little left of the law. They don't know I'm an agent, so they deal with me.'

'Ah,' Wufei guessed. 'Connections from your undercover work.'

'Bingo.' Duo laid a finger alongside his nose. 'I won't get anything official from them, but they'll be able to tell me who else to talk to.'

'I'd like to come,' Heero said.

Everyone else blinked at that. Not Duo, but it was there in the way Duo very much did not blink, held himself very still for a moment. Then he breathed in deeply, sucked in his cheeks, and said, 'Um. It's not really the kind of place where, um. You're a little--'

'What.'

'Asian,' Duo said.

'I can't go because I'm Japanese?'

'It's not a friendly neighbourhood,' Duo said lamely.

'You're white,' Wufei pointed out coolly. 'If race matters, I don't see why it's fine for you to go and not us.'

Cuartero whistled silently and walked away. Alvarez watched, grinning widely.

'What, now it's both of you?' Duo rubbed his neck. 'I said this badly. But the point stands. I can't go where I'm going dragging two men who look the way you look. I've spent years in Narcotics building an identity they can work with. They know me, okay. They don't know you, and it's not going to be all right for me to bring you.'

'I let you come last night,' Heero said. 'Sometimes we do things we shouldn't do.'

That landed. Duo swallowed.

 

**

 

'What's your undercover name?' Heero asked.

Duo parked. 'Duo,' he said.

Heero looked at him. 'You use your own name?'

'The first time I worked undercover I used a ready-made ID, and I gave it up in about two hours. I don't have records or a past that Preventers have to bury with fake passports and altered computer algorithms, anyway. As far as anything before 195 is concerned, I'm a ghost.' Duo pointed up the street. 'We're headed for that restaurant. A friend of mine goes there for lunch most days. When we get there, I talk, not you, okay? Even if he asks you questions, I answer them for you. You don't open your mouth even if he threatens to shoot you in the kneecaps and boil you.'

'Is he going to do that?' he asked, quite practically, he thought. He only had his sidearm and his ankle holster, and Duo appeared to be-- well, it was Duo, so appearances were only so much of the story-- unarmed.

'Roque? Nah,' Duo shrugged. 'But I want you to act like he could. Because he could, and no-one would find you, got me? He's a powerful man and you're going to be respectful. But with your mouth closed.'

'I understand, Duo.'

'It's a good thing Wufei got too high-and-mighty to come after all.' Duo knocked down the sun shade and took his wallet from it. 'If I asked him to shut up he'd read me the Oration On the Dignity of Man just to show me he could. You'll actually listen.'

'It would be easier to listen if you didn't talk so much and say so little.'

Duo looked at him. Heero did not return his gaze. He unbuckled his safety belt, and opened his door. Or would have, but Duo reached over him and yanked it shut.

'Don't get out until I do,' he said. 'And if you want to be pissed at me about kissing last night, that's fine, but we do that off the clock.' He opened his own door, and exited the car.

Heero shoved the door wide, and stood out onto the pavement. He hadn't quite believed Duo's noise about the neighbourhood, but they were already gaining notice. San Francisco had a number of ethnic ghettos, but there was silent hostility in the stares that were coming their way. The old men loitering outside a dilapidated laundry grumbled to each other harmlessly, but the teenagers who stood on the corner opposite had an air of danger to them.

'Gang?' Heero asked Duo, who gestured him to follow. They crossed the street together, weaving between the cars that slowed for a red light. Heero let his hands fall loose and ready in case he needed to reach for a weapon.

Duo did not-- he walked with his hands in his pockets, and that could only be deliberate. But then, looking at him, he didn't look any less dangerous than the teenagers. There was something about the set of his shoulders. He wasn't afraid.

'Probably,' Duo said. He glanced, and shrugged. 'ALKN. They're not the ones we're worried about. Benito wouldn't have been involved with them, or at least not the young ones like that.'

'But maybe the ones like Roque?'

'Roque is way too high-up for a yucko like Benito. Questions later, okay?' Duo mounted the kerb in front of Birreria Tepechi. 'Did you bring your badge?'

'After what you said, I didn't think you'd want me to.'

'Yeah, but I figured you'd have it anyway.'

'It's in my wallet,' he admitted.

'Man, Preventers have really ground you down, Heero,' Duo said. 'Come on.'

Heero had more or less expected the restaurant to be a front, or at the least a laundering business for gang money. It might well have been that, but it was also a nice-looking establishment, brightly painted in the lobby and bar, welcoming yellows and blues accented with warm inviting music. Waitresses in flamenco skirts and blouses brought loaded trays of food to guests in the booths. The margaritas seemed to be selling well.

'Two for lunch, seňores?' the hostess asked them.

'Two for the bar, seňorita.' Duo laid his hand over the lip of her podium, and a folded bill slid almost invisibly beneath the edge of her appointment book. She noted it with a dip of her long lashes. 'Is he here?'

'He's here.' She looked behind Duo to Heero, looking him over from head to foot. 'He won't be happy about that.'

'Don't I know it.' Duo nodded for Heero to follow. 'Back this way. Roque likes the enchiladas here. It's always the first place I look for him.'

The bar was through a large archway to the left and around a second seating area of booths and tables. Duo led the way confidently, and Heero stayed close, knowing he was meant to, knowing by now that Duo had been very serious about the likely reaction to his ethnicity. They were not in friendly territory, even if Duo knew his way through the negotiations.

There was only one man seated at the bar. Roque. He was young, not much older than Heero and Duo, and though he was a lean fellow, the thin cotton of his tee shirt left no imagination about the heft of his muscles. A ponytail of shoulder-length black hair left a tattooed neck visible well into the low collar of his shirt. Definitely gang, and likely extensive prison time, if the blurry ink and imprecise artistry was any indication. Juvenile offender, and someone who had emerged to a position of relative prominence, if he was someone Duo sought for information.

'Mi amigo,' Duo called, and the dark head lifted from a plate of food. 'Ha sido un rato. ¿Cómo estás?'

'Duo!' The other man slid from his stool to clasp wrists with Duo, pulling him into a rough embrace. 'How you been, cabron? Where you been hiding?'

'I'm good.' With the permission of a friendly gesture, Duo took the stool next to Roque. 'Been laying low. Mi vida loca, you know?'

'Not hardly.' That earned a wry smile. 'You never tell me the whole story. You look better than the last time I seen you. You got that arm out the cast, at least.'

'Just last week.' Duo obediently rotated his left arm, to prove it worked once more. 'Still sore.'

'So you ever gonna tell me who you crossed that beat you two miles outside of Death's door?' Roque looked at him cannily as Duo only mutely shook his head. 'Not this time, huh. Well, you call me if you ever want help taking care of whoever it was. 'Berto didn't like seeing you like that. I didn't like seeing you like that. You have friends with us. Wouldn't be no favours owed, not for that.'

'I appreciate it,' Duo said. 'I am actually here to ask after a favour. Not that favour, but still a favour, if you'll hear me out.'

Roque had noticed Heero. Roque had likely noticed Heero before he'd even begun talking to Duo, but he looked, now, acknowledging it in the opening Duo had left, and it was clear he was not pleased. His mouth, smiling before, had gone flat.

'A favour that involves bringing a cop to my favourite restaurant,' he said in English. It was aimed at Heero as well as Duo. 'You really are loco, Duo.'

'He's not a cop.' Duo snapped his fingers at Heero, and Heero allowed himself to look cross at that; Duo wouldn't be that irritating without meaning to make a show of it. 'Show him your badge,' Duo said. 'He's a Preventer.'

Heero reached into his coat for his wallet. And suddenly a half-dozen men at the tables behind them were standing, shoving their chairs back. Roque didn't look, but made a quieting gesture with his hand. Duo didn't seem surprised by it, either, and now Heero was cross, for not thinking it would happen. He'd already been assuming Roque was someone important in a gang, and now it was obvious that whatever gang he was in was a major player in the city. Whoever Roque was, he was no lone soldier. He ranked a bodyguard.

Heero showed his empty hands to the air behind him, and reached again, slowly, for his wallet. He kept it visible while he opened it to the badge clip. Roque eyed it solemnly.

'Preventer,' he repeated. 'Preventer, cop. Not sure it makes much difference. What's a Preventer got you hopping for?'

'There's a kid missing. Connected to a case Preventers are working on.' Duo pulled the picture of Micco Rodelan from his jacket. The bodyguards, Heero noted, didn't care what Duo went reaching for. They were sitting down and resuming their meals and didn't twitch for him. 'He's colonial,' Duo said. 'So Preventers came to me. Thinking maybe I could help run down some connections.'

Roque took the picture, but he only sighed. 'Man, they're playing you,' he said frankly. 'You think they gotta go to a Gundam Pilot for every missing colonist? They trying to pull you in, Duo.'

That was the puzzle piece Heero had been missing. It wasn't just that Duo used his own name for undercover work; he was himself, and that was its own form of currency in a world that knew and perhaps respected the Gundam Pilots still. He had fought a war, but wouldn't be recognised here for heroics-- he'd be feared for his deadly capability and self-sufficiency. In the underworld of San Francisco Duo's L2 past wasn't a hindrance, but a badge of honour. His notoriety as a Pilot gave him a kind of celebrity that could be useful, in the right context. He could be known to the 'right' people and still be expected to live a shady life, a life that would connect with both Preventers and gangs alike.

And he could see too that Roque's perspective was sensible. Without all the facts, it was a reasonable presumption. And, though Duo wouldn't thank him for it, it was an opening that Heero should pursue, if it would give Duo the cover he needed to get Roque's help.

So he stepped forward, quickly enough that Roque and Duo both sat back in startlement. 'Never mind,' he said brusquely, grabbing for the picture.

'Hey,' Duo protested. But caught on quickly, and pinned the photograph before Heero could get it off the bar. 'I told you I was in. Go order a drink, Agent.'

'Maxwell—'

'Back off.'

They pretended to glare each other down while Roque watched with great interest. Heero broke first, with a huff of annoyance, and shuffled to Duo's right, taking up an awkward stance against the bar. Duo rubbed at his neck as if he didn't like feeling Heero standing so close to him there, and heaved a deep sigh of his own.

'Look,' he said, 'Roque, I know and I don't care. The missing kid is colonial. You know more than I could tell you what it's like to be in a city like this where la policia don't give a flying shit about any kid from the block. He's my people. If I can help, I gotta try, don't I?'

'Not if you start thinking with this and not with this.' Roque touched his chest first-- his heart-- and then his head. 'What do you even want me to do? Why bring this to me?'

'That's the favour part. Put the kid's picture around? If he's just run away, he might turn up in places the police and Preventers won't be looking.' Duo rubbed a folded edge of the pic. 'Kid got fucked around real bad on Earth. There was a priest. Jose Benito. He took advantage, you know what I'm getting at. Preventers think the kid is guilty of taking vengeance. I'd like to find him before they decide he's guilty and put an arrest warrant out instead of a BOLO.'

'What if the kid is guilty?' Roque asked.

'Then I'd like to find him so he's safe,' Duo said simply. 'Not to lock him up. You know I'll defend him.'

'I don't know that they'll listen.' Roque jerked his chin at Heero. 'And I don't know that you'll make 'em listen by wishing, man. I think you're better off washing your hands of this.'

'All I can do is ask you to trust me.'

'Ahhh.' Roque tugged on his ponytail in a way that reminded Heero sharply of Duo. '¡Bien! De acuerdo. Give me the photograph.' Duo passed it eagerly, and Roque looked at it again with a shake of his head before he pocketed it. 'Don't get your hopes up, Duo. Odds aren't gonna be good we find the boy.'

'I'm not much for hope or for odds,' Duo admitted. 'But I also don't believe you get anywhere unless you keep trying. Gracias, Roque. Amigo en la adversidad es amigo de verdad.'

'You been talking to my abuelita again,' Roque reproved him. 'She already likes you better cause you watch her damn stories with her.'

Duo grinned. 'I'm always a hit with the old ladies. Seriously, Roque, thank you.'

'No more cops, Duo. No more Preventers neither.'

'He's already gone.' Duo stood, and crooked a finger at Heero. Heero stood. Roque and Duo shook hands, and then it was done. Roque turned back to his meal, and Duo was moving for the door at a rapid pace. Heero kept up with him by dint of longer legs, and managed to get the door opened for the both before Duo went bowling through it.

'You didn't--'

'Car,' Duo said.

They crossed the street. Many of the same faces were there as before, clearly waiting for their reappearance. A few of the young toughs had moved closer to their car, but as they neared it they dispersed rather than confront. Heero kept his hand near his weapon anyway, even as Duo unlocked the doors and they climbed in. Duo stuck the key in the ignition and started the engine. With only a quick glance for oncoming traffic, he pulled out of parking and into the lane, and revved up to speed immediately.

'You didn't ask about the meth,' Heero said.

'Preventers ought to do at least a little of the investigating, don't you think?' Duo adjusted his rearview mirror. 'We can handle that in Narc. And if it is a colonial angle, Roque won't know anything about it anyway. Almighty Latin King Nation mainly deal in cocaine, crack, heroin. Marijuana at the lower levels. They don't bother with meth.'

'Maybe they did this time.'

'They don't. ALKN are way more structured than other gangs. They don't go outside their hierarchy and if their members break the rules, the Crown Council deals with them. The meth is way more likely to be colonial.'

'If you say so.'

'I do. This is what we do in Narcotics, you know. Study this stuff.'

'I know.' Heero pulled his sunglasses from his inner pocket and put them on. The morning fog had totally cleared and it was getting painfully bright in the afternoon. 'Who is Roque? Why'd you go to him?'

'Abelino Roque. It took me about a year and a half to get to him. I had to get myself arrested and sit in jail for three weeks before we met up while he was being transferred for a parole hearing.' Duo made a sharp right, and after a short trip through a dank alley they were suddenly out of the Latin quarter and back on the Castro. Heero let himself unclench from the idea of having to be ready with his ammo. 'He's a good guy,' Duo was saying. 'Smart. And old-school Kingist. He lives by the Manifesto. No prejudices, no dehumanising labels, no horizons between races. It's the inherent social injustices in system that's the problem, and that's why he's going to care about a missing kid.'

'And about you. Maybe it was good that I was there.'

'It helped,' Duo allowed. 'I hadn't anticipated he'd go for that angle on it.'

'He's not wrong about it. You care more about the kid than the rest of the case.'

Duo rubbed his nose. 'Micco is still alive. The priest is dead and the priest was the baddie. I think my priorities are well in order, Heero.'

'Your priority is objective investigation.'

'This is because you're pissed at me.'

'This is because I care about you and you care about causes.' Heero turned his head to the window. 'The missing boy is a cause and maybe Trowa is a cause too. I don't know. You're the only one who can know what's happening inside your head. But Roque was right about that, too. You don't think with your head, even when you should be.'

'Heero,' Duo said, and then didn't say anything else. When Heero looked at him, he was staring at the road with a grim expression, his jaw locked and his hands tight on the wheel.


	2. Heero - Two

Wufei poured another cup of tea. 'The apartment looks nice, with Duo's things there. It's clean now.'

Heero pushed his udon through a dredge of sauce. 'It took him three years to unpack his old apartment.'

'He has reason to play house now.' Wufei sipped. 'He asked after you. Trowa.'

'Why?'

'You were friends,' Wufei observed. 'Once.'

'Before,' Heero said, and set his chopsticks aside. He wiped his mouth and sat back. The break room in their office was too cold, today-- the radiator was broken again, and the uncushioned metal chairs were like blocks of ice. He wasn't-- relaxed. Every bit of him felt tense, and sore from being tense so long.

'Are we playing twenty questions?' Wufei asked testily. 'Must I demand why that as well? If you found it possible to forgive me for what I did, surely it's possible to forgive Trowa what he does now.'

'You were sorry,' Heero said bluntly. 'He's not.'

'And what he does is not so awful as what I did.' Wufei said it calmly enough; they were many years on the other side of a duel that had nearly killed them both, after all, but then they were many years past the month Trowa had spent nursing Heero to health, the month after they had spent travelling Europe to visit the survivors of Heero's deadly mistake at New Edwards, the weeks in the frozen wasteland of the Arctic while they waited for Zechs Merquise to decide what spot was most honourable for a challenge of sabers and testosterone. That Trowa had had his loyalty. That Trowa had been a man he understood. That Trowa had been someone he'd cared about. It wouldn't have been so bad for Duo to choose someone like that Trowa.

'You heard about what he did in Antigua,' Heero said then. 'He bragged about it.'

Wufei set aside his cup with a sigh. 'It wasn't bragging. Quatre asked him where he'd been to get so tan. He answered.'

'He bragged. He told that story to rile Quatre and to make the rest of us fully aware he doesn't care if we know.'

'If he wants to make money it's understandable. After the media called him a gold digger for pursuing Quatre.'

'They called all of us gold diggers, before we went public. Quatre gave all of us money in the beginning. The rest of us stayed legitimate, paid him back.' He negated the argument with a slash of his hand. 'He chose. Now Duo's chosen. That's all.'

'Duo might be happy,' Wufei said. 'Or doesn't that hold any weight with you? He hasn't been happy in a very long time.'

Wufei was lecturing. Wufei seemed to think he needed to be lectured, and he didn't know if it was all Wufei's idea or if Duo had asked him to, but he was tired of it. He put an end to it by opening the case file that had sat on the table between their dinners, moving it between them and flipping to the fresh preliminary report from the coroner. 'Asphyxiation,' he said. 'The lung biopsy isn't back yet, but the coroner is calling it asphyxiation.'

'So Benito was alive when the car burned.'

'Long enough to die of smoke inhalation.' Heero turned the page. 'There were no restraints. And the shop hasn't come back yet with any indication that the doors were altered or broken. Maybe Benito was drugged or otherwise unconscious.'

'Toxin screen is standard for autopsies. It should come back with anything but the more unusual ways of putting a man to sleep. And if we're still assuming it was the missing boy who did this, he wouldn't have had access to anything terribly unusual.'

'Could it have been the boy?' Heero rubbed his fingerpad along the edge of the paper, while Wufei shook his head impatiently. 'Not just because it's what Duo wants to think. From a practical standpoint. The boy was four-foot-ten and barely eighty pounds. Benito was five-nine and weighed one-ninety. There's no way Micco could have dragged him anywhere, unconscious certainly, definitely not awake and fighting.'

'We've been speculating on the meth angle. Let's speculate a little more.' Wufei finished his tea and held his cup between both hands. 'You're Micco. You and your friend, both orphans, have been accused of lying about what Benito has done to you. At the least you'll lose your positions in Benito's programme. At the most you'll lose your positions at the orphanage-- Benito knows now that you're talking, and he has the power to pursue you, punish you. The little bit of stability you've had since the war is gone. And the man who's been abusing you has total power over you, unless you don't care about what happens to yourself anymore, if you've given up. You lure Benito to come see you. You entice him with the only thing he really wants-- you. You get him into the car and you get him to try a few grams of meth to relax with you, as a gesture of apology--'

'We don't know that Benito was using meth.'

'Duo suggested he might be. Maybe we were hasty to dismiss that idea. Even if he was only an occasional user, even if he'd never used until Micco gave it to him that night from the stash in the car, if it was enough to incapacitate him while Micco slipped out and started the fire...' Wufei lifted his shoulders in a small elegant shrug. 'We should call the coroner. Ask him to include methamphetamines in the toxin screen.'

'Duo doesn't think the boy is guilty.'

'What do you think?' Wufei waited for his answer, but Heero had none to give. At last Wufei looked away. 'I think,' he said, 'that if I were that boy, that if I had suffered what he had, I would want to do something about it. I think that's what Duo doesn't really want to face. Duo was that boy. Duo knows better than either of us what that boy would do. I hope Duo finds him, Heero, I do. The world is dark. Men like Benito deserve what fates befall them. And maybe boys like Micco grow up to become men like Duo Maxwell. That's the only good outcome we can hope for.'

Heero turned to the section Narcotics had already begun to fill with reports. Duo's notes were there in duplicate, typed from his spindly short-hand that no-one but him could read. Abelino Roque went unnamed, called only a Confidential Informant, and their visit to him was described in the vaguest possible terms-- _Agents Dodger and Wolf requested a local CI provide any information available._ 'Do you know anything about Duo's last undercover op?' he asked Wufei.

'Only that it was worse than usual. Narc keep those missions under tight wraps. They don't even release the full reports, only the actionable intelligence.'

'He goes by his own name. They know him as Duo Maxwell, Gundam Pilot from L2.'

Wufei took that with some surprise, sitting back himself to consider it. 'That doesn't seem safe,' he commented at last. 'Although it does explain a few things. They scrubbed his name from the system when he left Homicide. And that's about the time they started enforcing the rule against using agents' real names in reports.' He curled one side of his mouth in a smile. 'I'd lay ten dollars he suggested it.'

'His informant thought Preventers were deliberately using the missing boy to drag Duo into Preventers, like he was one of our confidential informants and we wanted him to turn legitimate. As if we'd calculated this specific case to hook him in. It does seem calculated, if you look at it from the outside.'

'I don't understand.'

'It's a case Duo couldn't possibly walk away from. A priest. A missing colonial boy. We've got no evidence at all from the scene, from the street cameras, from the car, from the--'

Wufei opened his mouth, and then didn't speak. He wet his lips. 'I-- don't think I do understand. What are you saying?'

Heero inhaled. 'Nothing. I'm not saying anything.' He closed the case file, and stood. 'Let's call the coroner and add meth to the tox screen. And I want a rush on the DNA profile.'

'We'll have to file for an exception.'

'Let's file, then. We know from his tapes that Benito might be involved with a dozen other abuse cases. Who knows if any of those went to evidence lockers and sat without examination. We might be able to close cases for a lot of other Miccos.'

'I can support that.' Wufei cleared their dishes and binned them. 'Lead the way.'

 

**

 

'Good thinking on that full DNA profile,' Alvarez told them two days later. 'Man, what a shit-splosion this is.'

'All kinds of dirtbags found a hiding place during the war,' Duo observed grimly. 'Then again, people would say the same about me.'

Cuartero made a noise at that, and just barely managed to turn it into a cough. Duo inhaled deeply through gritted teeth, and let it pass without saying anything. Wufei, however, stepped on Cuartero's foot as he passed on his way to the hot water kettle. Cuartero glared.

'What did you find about Benito?' Heero asked, trying to turn it back to the case.

'That he's not Jose Benito,' Alvarez answered. He tapped a few times on his keyboard, and projected his screen onto the big monitor at the head of the room. 'According to his DNA, he's Domínguez Salgado. And Seňor Salgado is one guilty motherfucker. Rap sheet as long as my arm. Trafficking and kidnapping, about twenty violations of the Ocala Act for cross-border transportation of minor children. He got picked up by Alliance military police after an allegation that he'd abused the son of an officer, but when the Order of the Zodiac launched a coup against the Alliance and destroyed all those bases, Salgado must have got away somehow. Looks like he faked his papers and found himself a position where no-one asked too many questions. A small church wouldn't have the resources to run an intensive background check.'

'But they think he's all kinds of tops for wanting to expand their programme to care for poor kids. Lovely.' Duo pondered the words on the screen, propping his chin on his hand. 'If we find Micco, I say we give the kid a medal.'

'Any word from your informant?' Wufei asked. He put a cup of tea on Duo's desk. Duo accepted it with a quick smile of thanks.

'No sightings,' he said. 'Which worries me, actually. A local kid might have that kind of savvy. If we were on L2 I'd expect Micco to know how to disappear himself. But he shouldn't know how to vanish in a strange city on Earth. Everything here is different, and bigger. The weather systems alone make a huge difference. He'd need a whole different kind of shelter at night than in the colonies.'

'You would have done all right,' Alvarez dismissed that.

'Are you kidding? I almost got myself killed the first time I tried to colony-hop. I hid in the luggage compartment and nearly suffocated before I found a hatch, and I got caught in three effing seconds. If I hadn't had the sweet luck to land myself on a shuttle full of Resistance fighters, I would've been shown out the nearest airlock.' Duo leant back in his chair with his tea, and set his feet up on his desk. 'Wufei, what was your theory about Micco trying to draw Benito-slash-Salgado out to the car?'

'I thought you didn't like my theory,' Wufei said, finding himself an open chair.

'What I don't like about it is the meth angle. We've got no evidence that either Micco or Benito were into meth. You didn't find anything in Micco's room at the orphanage?'

'Nothing. A few sets of clothes, school texts. He didn't own anything, and it was communal space.'

'Did you find his hiding spot?'

'Hiding spot?' Heero asked.

'Sure. Every kid in an orphanage has a hiding spot. Loose floorboard. Toilet tank. Hole in the mattress.' Duo sipped his tea. 'A normal kid hides his porn. Given what Micco was going through, he might have been hiding something else. Evidence. Plans. Plus, I think it's weird he ditched the place without any of his stuff. That says he panicked, not that he was planning to off Benito. Or that Benito did something to him, not the other way around.'

Heero reluctantly agreed with that. 'Unless he had resources somewhere else.'

'Right. All thirteen-year-olds have stashes of gold bars around San Francisco.' Duo drank from his tea again. 'Mind if I check out the orphanage with you? You been in one, you've been in all of them, you know. I might be able to turn something up.'

'You don't have to be polite about it,' Wufei said. 'You're lead on the case. If you want to go, go.'

Duo grinned. 'Just keeping it friendly-like. Any head-way on interviewing the other kid? Jesse Olmeda?'

'I got like nineteen calls waiting with his lawyer,' Alvarez shrugged. 'Nothing so far. Maybe you should try it. Flap the old eyelashes. I can't do sob stories the way you can.'

Duo rolled his eyes. Heero stopped nodding along when he realised it was joke.

'I can push our lab on trying to process the meth samples,' Cuartero offered, somewhat subdued. 'If you think that would help.'

'I'm not sure it would.' Duo wrapped the string of his tea bag around his finger. 'At the most they'll push it up a couple of weeks. Ask for it, I guess, but don't expect it. It might not tell us anything we don't already know. I think we might be better off trying to shake down some of the likely colonial dealers and seeing if they'll cop to losing a shipment in a '98 Chevy.'

'I can start on that.'

'Yeah. Thanks.' Duo met Cuartero's eyes, but only briefly. 'Alvarez, forget calling the lawyer. Just go to her office and sit there until she agrees to talk to you. If Captain asks, tell him I said it was just a waste of time.'

Alvarez only shrugged at that. 'You're the boss, Jefe. You know the Captain doesn't like it when you cut corners.'

'This isn't a corner, it's red tape. No-one likes red tape.'

'While we're across town we should stop to interview Sonja King for the Ragazzo case,' Wufei murmured to Heero. 'We don't want to fall behind on our other cases, especially since we're only secondary unit on this.'

'Fine,' Heero agreed. 'Tell Duo to take a separate car.'

'Tell me to what?' Duo asked, attuned to the sound of his own name. 'You plotting without me?'

'Other cases,' Wufei said. 'Mind if we drive separately? We'll split from you after we finish at the orphanage.'

'That's cool. I've got to wrap up loose ends on some paperwork and I have trek my ass to a notary.' Duo dug in his desk for a file, and came back with a hefty manila folder. 'Alvarez, you got the proof on HS-39302?'

'I have it,' Cuartero said, and found it for him. 'I was checking it against the Martinez case.'

'Martinez? Why?'

'I just was. Don't worry about it.'

'You don't need to check my work, Cuartero.'

'I wasn't. I told you I was checking it against the Martinez case.'

'Whatever.' Duo shoved to his feet. 'Let me hit the john, guys, and I'll be right with you. Meet you in the downstairs lobby.'

'What'd you do to him?' Alvarez asked curiously.

'Nothing,' Cuartero snapped, and stalked off in the opposite direction.

'Hm,' Wufei said softly, pleased. He grabbed his coat and exited smartly. Heero followed slowly.

And slowed even more when they left the lifts for the front lobby and found a visitor waiting by the potted palms and leather couches. Trowa.

'Hey,' Trowa called, lifting a hand in a lazy wave. Wufei returned it, though he did murmur to Heero, 'Should we be surprised they wouldn't issue him a visitor badge?'

'He probably didn't ask,' Heero replied. Trowa didn't bother with things like that. And might have guessed that if he simply waited long enough someone he knew would show up eventually. Work smart, Trowa had told him once, after he'd tried to kill himself in his Gundam and not long before he'd infiltrated OZ.

They drew even at the green marble fountain. 'Hey,' Trowa said again, this time directing it at Heero specifically. 'Haven't seen you in a while. Everything okay?'

'Busy,' Heero said. Wufei was looking at him from frowning brows, and Trowa had slightly pursed lips that said more than words that he knew that was a lie. Heero inhaled. 'I heard your news,' he said then. 'Congratulations. We're all surprised.'

'Quat set it up,' Trowa shrugged. 'You know how he is. He's probably got black-book entries just waiting for you two studs, too.'

'Don't you dare,' Wufei sighed. 'If you so much as think it in his direction he'll hear you.'

Trowa actually grinned at that. It was hard not to notice that he seemed more relaxed than usual, lighter in the eyes. It had to be Duo. The way it had to be Duo who put a sudden sly gleam in Trowa's face.

'Hey,' Trowa said again, softer now.

'Hey.' Duo joined them at last. In public, neither he nor Trowa made any move to embrace or otherwise reveal their relationship; Duo was careful, in the rough and tumble atmosphere of Preventers, and Trowa obviously knew enough not to tip his hand. Probably it was bad enough that they had a quorum of Gundam Pilots gathering in the lobby.

'You were on the move early today,' Trowa said. He extended his hand, holding a rumpled paper bag. 'I thought I'd bring lunch.'

'You brought me lunch.' Duo didn't take the bag immediately. He screwed his mouth to the side as if he were chewing the inside of his cheek. 'That's-- nice.'

'Well,' Trowa said, 'I know how much you like it when men show up unexpectedly to feed you in the middle of a crisis.'

That had the tone of an inside joke. Heero found something else to look at. It was starting to rain outside. He didn't have an umbrella. He was glad. He wanted to be wet and cold.

Duo laughed one of his rare big guffaws. 'Okay,' he drawled. 'That's balls. I give you that one.' He opened the bag and shook out the contents. 'You do lose points for presentation, though. What are these?'

'Cucumber and butter sandwiches.'

'Are you sure?' Duo held one to the light. 'Maybe it used to be. Did you sit on them?'

'They'll eat the same,' Trowa shrugged. He reached out and turned Duo's wrist to check his watch. He sneaked in a caress as he did so, fooling absolutely no-one; Duo actually blushed. 'Nine forty,' Trowa said. 'Nine forty two.'

Heero walked away. He didn't mean to do it, but his feet were just moving on their own, and then he was outside. He didn't remember about the rain until it dripped in his eyes. He pushed his hair off his face, and it stayed back, damp strands sticking to each other. Wet dripped down the neck of his shirt, and he shivered.

'Heero?'

It was Wufei. Wufei caught up to him on the kerb, tucking the case file under his coat and zipping it to his throat. Heero refused to look at him, and didn't say anything, either.

'Button your coat,' Wufei said finally. 'You'll be soaked all day.'

He caught a button in the middle just to shut Wufei up. The crosswalk turned to allow pedestrians, and he walked through the intersection, with no clear idea where he was headed. Movement. He wanted movement. He wanted to run, hard, hard enough not to have to think.

Wufei caught up with him again, falling into step with him. Heero wiped his forehead of rain, and said, 'Go away.'

'If I go away we can't pretend you're out here answering a work call instead of behaving like a lovesick child.'

Heero mounted the pavement in front of a liquor store and about-faced. Wufei reared back to keep from walking right into him. 'Go away,' Heero said again.

Wufei took a step left and stood up beside him. 'No.'

'I don't want to talk to you.'

'Then don't talk. Listen. What will it take to snap you out of this?'

'Punching you,' Heero grunted. ' _Go away_.'

'You have a romanticised notion of Duo. It does neither of you any favours.'

'Romanticised-- Wufei.'

'The way you feel about him is more about your feelings than about who he really is. Every time you get even close to thinking about him as a real person you run away from it.' Wufei followed him into the shelter of the store's overhang. 'Tell me I'm wrong and I'll stop. Tell me you're over him and I'll stop. But tell me that all you really need is to confront it and understand it and move on, and I'll believe you.'

Heero put a fist against the brick. He pressed, slowly, until the grains dug into the skin of his knuckles. 'He'll be happy.'

'For a while, yes. Maybe for longer. Maybe Trowa will try, and Duo will let him. They might work, and they might not. But that's about them. How you handle it is about you.'

'Heero?'

Duo. Across the street. Standing there waiting to be called over, sensing something wrong. Even across four lanes of traffic Heero could read the worry on his face.

Justified. They'd left him standing in the lobby with his-- boyfriend. Abandoned him there.

'You're all right,' Wufei said. Not asked.

Heero nodded. Yes. All right. He would be. He was.

Duo came at the next light. Wufei stood beside him, waiting silently with him, as Duo approached. Duo tugged his hoodie up against the rain, but it was dark grey by the time he reached them. He stood with hunched shoulders just outside the range of the overhang.

'You guys okay?' he asked. 'You took off. You need to get somewhere else? I can check out the orphanage on my own. Hey, um, you want a sandwich? Trowa made, like, five. I, uh-- you need to say something or I'm going to keep talking.'

'No, thank you,' Wufei said. 'To the sandwich. They looked...'

'Kinda crappy,' Duo finished. 'I won't let him cook again. It was kind of a riff on a thing that happened a couple weeks ago, he was being funny, or I guess he thought he was being funny anyway, and that's, um, over now.' He shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing up the street. 'Look,' he said tensely, 'I didn't mean to freak you guys out. You won't see that kind of stuff again. It was unprofessional. I'm sorry.'

'You have nothing to apologise for,' Wufei said sharply. 'Not to me. Now stop being silly and get out of the rain. Do you want a coffee?'

'Um.' Duo shuffled in under the overhang to join them. 'Uh, no. Yeah. Yeah, I could use a coffee. I have some change--'

'It's my turn to buy. Heero?'

'No. Thanks.'

Duo brushed his hood back and raked his fringe. 'Do I need to apologise to you?' he asked.

'No.' Heero grimaced, and made an effort to look him in the eye. Duo wanted it, wouldn't relax until he had it. 'Not for that.'

'How about sorry for the other night.'

'Why did you--' The words were not easy to say. 'Why did you kiss me. Why not just-- not. We could have gone for ever without that, if it's not ever-- going to happen with us.'

'Heero...' Duo glared off unhappily at the rain, his shoulders slumped. 'I don't read the future. I don't even read myself so hot some days. That night... it was not a good night for me, I guess. It felt right. It felt important to let you know how I felt just then. You know I care about you. That never changes.'

He swallowed down the first protest that occurred, and the one that occurred after that, too. In the end, he only nodded.

'That never changes,' he agreed, and Duo smiled tentatively.

 

**

 

The eighth day after the priest-who-wasn't died, they caught a break in they case. And it walked in the front door, hand-couriered by Abelino Roque.

The guard at the desk let him up without question, which was better than Trowa had managed. Then again, Roque came in carrying a pizza as well as a clue, so maybe the guard needed a refresher on protocols.

Heero stood when he saw who came off the lifts, and nudged Wufei to attention. 'Look,' he said, before remembering that Wufei hadn't been at the meet and wouldn't recognise Roque on sight. But Wufei responded to his alertness nonetheless, rising with Heero, buttoning his suit coat and looking curiously at their visitor. Roque was not as curious about them. He didn't look around their office, or even at the faces of the Preventers sitting at the desks arranged around the open floor. He located Heero easily enough, and crossed the room to him.

'Sir,' Heero said. 'Sit down.'

'That an order or a request?' Roque opened his coat. He was armed, without a care for whether Heero saw. Wufei's cheeks went hollow as if he were biting back a comment about a carrying license. But Roque didn't reach for either of his visible guns. He had a package, a plain paper-wrapped package, and he dropped it to Heero's desk atop the pizza.

'What is it?' Heero asked.

'Open it and find out.'

Wufei crossed his arms. Heero made no move toward it. 'Why come here?' Heero pressed him. 'Why bring that to me, instead of Duo?'

'You're Duo's handler, ain't you?' Roque took the chair beside Heero's desk, then, sprawling back with the easy manner of someone who hadn't been truly threatened in a very long time, with or without his entourage of bodyguards. Heero sat more slowly, tucking his tie flat. Wufei did not, taking up stance behind Heero's seat.

'I'm not his handler,' Heero said finally. Duo didn't need the trouble that story would bring him, not in the long term, and Heero didn't need the trouble that attention from gangbangers would bring him, either. If people at Roque's level remembered him enough to seek him out, then it was time to bail on a bad story. 'He cut me loose. He said he'd find the kid on his own and I could fuck my mother.'

Wufei shuffled at his back, but Roque laughed long and hard at that. 'Ahh,' he said, 'ahh, that sounds like my boy. Good on him. You even seen the back of him since then?'

'Not even a hint of the braid.' Heero used his pencil to poke Roque's package. 'So again. Why bring this to me, and not him? You don't like me. He didn't like me.'

Roque shrugged, which was surely not as meaningless as it seemed. 'You Preventers, not cops.'

'I thought that didn't matter.'

'Mattered to Duo.' Roque nodded at the package. 'You gonna open that?'

'When you actually answer my question.'

Roque rubbed a pockmarked cheek, contemplating him in no great rush. 'Duo ain't gonna like the contents, you know,' he said at last. 'And I don't think he's gonna find the muchacho. Better you take care of it on the quiet. Don't involve him too much.'

The contents. Proof of some kind. Proof of guilt. Heero spun the package with his pencil, and tapped it. 'Because Duo's such a sterling guy and you want to protect his better nature.'

'Because I owe Duo my life and he didn't ask for anything but a look-out.'

Wufei was getting impatient with the show, tired of being left out of the loop. He leant over Heero's shoulder and took the package. Heero looked away tensely as Wufei ripped it open. 'It's a VHS,' Wufei reported suspiciously. 'What's the recording show?'

'Street view on that priest the kid attacked. It's got the whole thing, right up to the bonfire event.'

'Street view?' Heero sat forward for that. 'Where did you get video? We canvassed the street and didn't find any cameras aimed at it.'

'Not everybody got my open-minded attitude, polizonte.' Roque smiled grimly at them. 'There's a bodega on the corner with a security camera. Little old man don't like the police. But he talked to my vatos.'

'Your vatos. --How did you find out what the kid did?'

Roque patently pitied his ignorance. Heero ground his teeth. 'Man,' Roque said, 'Preventers ain't doing you a lot of good, dude. Get out and breathe once in a while.' He levered himself to his feet. 'The video is real. And I got the old man to notarise it so you can use it as evidence if you need it.'

'Thank you for bringing this forward. You could have sat on it.'

'You'll see why I did.' Roque nodded at it. 'Hope you catch the bad-ass. And the kid.'

Wufei dropped the tape into Heero's lap. 'Well,' he said, watching Roque go, 'that must have been interesting for you. Care to fill me in?'

'Duo's contact,' Heero said, and propped his pencil between his teeth. The tape looked standard enough, and even had a label with the date of the night of Benito's murder.

'That much was obvious. Now the part I couldn't work out for myself? What was all that noise about Duo cutting you off?' Wufei took the chair Roque had vacated. 'And would it kill you to tell me these things when they happen? You barely said five words about the contact when it happened.'

'I didn't really expect Roque to come back with anything.' Heero bit down into the wood of his pencil, and then dropped it into the drawer with the rest of his collection. 'Some of Duo's ideas are good and some of them don't lead anywhere. He didn't tell Roque about the priest or the murder. Just the missing boy. And we did canvass that street. It's bull that someone wouldn't have volunteered a tape of a murder, especially a murder that violent.'

'Not necessarily.' Wufei checked the package for markings, and discarded it. 'We saw it often enough during the war. Relied on that kind of silence.'

'Then tell me it's not bull that Roque just happened to find this old man and his convenient camera after Duo asked him to.'

Wufei looked up. 'What does that mean?'

'That I find it odd,' Heero said flatly. 'That I find it very strange that we're working on a case that has Duo written all over it. A priest who betrays his calling and the children in his care. A boy who goes missing while trying to protect his friend. And when Duo reaches out to one of his left-of-legal friends for help, they turn up something that Preventers couldn't, and it happens to be video of the crime itself?'

'Stranger things have happened.' Wufei frowned at him. 'Shall I do you the favour of pretending I don't understand what you mean?'

He'd said it only a week ago to Duo. He said again now, no longer even that sure of what he meant. 'There have been killer cops before.'

Wufei's face was very still. He blinked once, and dropped his eyes. He said, 'This is because of Trowa. You're still upset with him because of Trowa, you're blaming him—'

'I'm capable of separating my feelings--' He lowered his voice self-consciously, though they already spoke in murmurs. 'I'm capable of removing my feelings from this situation. Objectively looking at it. You know the rumour. That a few too many murders lately have been wrapping up too neatly, perpetrator unknown, no evidence ever found.'

'A few too many,' Wufei scoffed. 'Two. And what's special about those cases? A serial rapist who was likely killed by one of his own victims. Good for her, whoever she was. That's not unsolvable, that's a quiet agreement not to look too closely, and we all know it.'

'What about the mob enforcer who--'

'And Duo is somehow responsible for this?' Wufei whispered hotly. 'Duo was no-where near that case.'

'But it was another child-killer. We know how Duo feels about that. He reads the weekly reports, the same as everyone. He'd know what's being investigated across the departments.'

Wufei grabbed the tape. 'We're watching this before you become entrenched in this shameful accusation. Where are the damn VCR cables?'

Heero rose reluctantly. Wufei was stalking off already, headed for the utility closet where they stored the extras for the AV equipment, but Heero found his feet felt like lead. He didn't want to see the tape. Whatever it held, it wouldn't be good. Either it would vindicate-- whoever was guilty of this-- or it wouldn't. But Roque had brought it in because it captured the entire scene. Duty or not, Heero wasn't sure he really wanted to confront something new about Duo one more time. If it were true-- if it were true, then that would be one more thing, one more thing to have to absorb and understand and decide on, decide on, because it wouldn't be the knowledge that would matter, in the end, it would be the next step that would really matter, the next step, and with Duo, the next step was always the cliff edge, always the surprise. Duo had always jumped it with him, before. Not this time, if this were true.

Wufei came out of the closet with a fist full of flex leads, and he wrestled the office VCR cart out of the corner. Heero followed slowly as Wufei wheeled it determinedly into the break room. Heero closed the door behind them, locked it in precaution. He felt-- both dim-brained and hot-wired. Burning, even tingling in his fingertips. He swallowed drily.

Wufei plugged the VCR to the break room television and inserted the tape. 'You'll see,' he said grimly.

Heero touched a chair, couldn't sit. His hands were in fists, that's why his fingers were numb. He couldn't relax them. He tried to unlock his knees and face the TV without thinking.

The black-and-white feed was shot with static and it was a long-view on the street, but it was definitely the street where Benito's car had been attacked. And the car was already there, just sitting by the kerb in the right-hand corner of the frame, almost obscured by the window of the bodega. Occasionally a customer inside the store would pass it by, blocking the view, but it was just clear enough, and it was even time-stamped. Roque had come through.

The boy. Micco Rodelan. Glancing up and down the street. He came into the bodego and purchased a candy bar, counting out the change in pennies and nickles. He didn't eat it. He stood outside for several minutes, shoulders hunched. Then, abruptly, he crossed the street. He tried two other cars before the one Benito would eventually die in. It opened-- or, at least, it opened after Micco stood at the door, blocking it with his body for a suspiciously long minute. He crawled inside and shut the door behind him.

'Picked the lock,' Wufei said. 'Older car. Didn't have the electronic locks.'

'Or an alarm,' Heero added.

There was no activity on the tape for nearly forty minutes. Wufei sped forward when they realised it, but Heero was the one who spotted the form approaching the car, and called the time. They rewound to watch it.

'Benito,' Heero said. 'Micco must have called him.'

The priest-who-wasn't seemed to know where he was going. He looked in the cars, until Micco waved for him. He got into the driver's side, and closed the door after him.

'Like you guessed,' Heero muttered, leaning over the table to watch. 'Micco lured him in.' He saw Wufei's tense nod from the corner of his eyes.

The tape wasn't of good enough quality to really see inside the car. Maybe a technician could improve on it, but Heero could make a guess. They'd likely be talking-- confronting each other-- after all, Benito had been accused publicly, even if he'd been successfully undermining his youthful accusers so far. The car began to rock, soon, and Heero let out a shallow breath. He hoped it was Micco making his move, and not Benito.

But someone was making a move. There was a shadow breaking away from the street. A man, though not a tall man, head covered by a hood, striding toward the car. It was night, and even the camera had trouble picking it up, but Heero, squinting, could just see it-- the man had a gun, and when he went to the car, he aimed it through the driver's side window.

There must have been yelling, words exchanged, but it was all silent on the film. A long minute later, the passenger door opened, and Micco slid out. He ran, without looking back. He disappeared into the alley, and was gone.

'So he was there,' Heero said. 'And that's the last anyone saw of him, but he was alive that night.'

Wufei didn't respond. He was still watching. The man with the gun hadn't gone after rescuing Micco. He did circle slowly around the car, to close the open passenger door. He walked the long way around the car, past the boot, and paused there. It was propped just slightly open. He lifted the trunk lid, to peer inside. Benito tried to make a break for it, and the man aimed sharply with his gun; Benito subsided, closing his door obediently. The man circled back to the driver's door, the gun pointed head-height at Benito sitting inside.

'What's he waiting for?'

Waiting for that. A lighter. The man had a lighter. He showed it to the man in the car, and then he went back to the trunk. He struck the lighter with a flare of white on the film, and dropped it in. Where all those flammable methamphetamines were waiting.

The fire was instantaneous. And it spread immediately, leaping from the trunk into the backseat as if there were no barrier. The man only walked calmly back to the driver's side as Benito scrambled. He put a foot on the door, and blocked it. He stood there with his gun, and blocked all exit.

Heero straightened, breathing in deeply. So. That was how it had happened. Benito had burned in the car because someone had kept him in there until he'd died of smoke inhalation. The man had faced death one way or the other, and hadn't been brave enough or smart enough to take the bullet instead. And it was all on camera.

He thought, then, too, that Roque wouldn't have turned this over if he believed Duo was the perp. Because it simply wouldn't occur to Roque? Maybe. The figure on camera didn't look especially like Duo, didn't move like him, but it was a dark image, and there was no face, no comparison to be made except for height and weight, and that was a good enough match for someone slim and short like Duo. Did Duo have it in him to hold a man at gunpoint and burn him alive?

Then meet Heero for drinks a few hours later and tell him he was moving in with Trowa Barton. Laugh about it, and kiss him, and tell him he always wanted to be friends.

No.

No, that he didn't believe. Did he? A Duo who was sick at a crime scene and who kissed like that couldn't be the same Duo who-- flew a Gundam with a burning scythe and called himself Death and grinned at bloody victory.

Heero rubbed his eyes. Wufei was right. Somewhere, sometime, he'd forgotten that about Duo. Duo didn't apologise for that part of himself, but Heero had forgotten about it all the same.

But it didn't make that Duo on the tape.

He cleared his throat. 'We should show Duo,' he said. 'The rest of Narcotics. It blows some holes in the theory that any of them were connected to meth.'

Wufei stirred. 'What?'

'That car. I think it was just abandoned. If Micco had to break into it. Even the perp seemed surprised by the meth there. I think it's a bad angle after all.' He used the remote controller to begin the rewind on the tape. 'You agree?'

'Heero, I...' Wufei wet his lips. 'I... yes. I agree. We should... let's get it to Duo.'

 

**

 

Duo pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands and held it there. 'God damn it,' he said dully. 'God damn it.'

The rest of his team was similarly disappointed. 'It's pretty clear to me,' Cuartero gave his opinion. 'Micco broke into that car and that makes it pretty unlikely he knew it was there beforehand, or that it was packing meth. And if Micco's the one who called Benito to him, then Benito was surprised by the meth, too. Did you dump the LUDs on the payphone in the bodega?'

'One call to Benito's church's office line,' Heero confirmed. 'No way to confirm it, but by the timeline it seems like Benito answered it himself. He and Micco might have talked, but either way Benito got the message about where to show up.'

'Even the perp seemed surprised by the meth. Stroke of good fortune.' Alvarez replayed it for the third time, leaning in to watch as the man on the screen opened the trunk of the car and found the meth. 'See? I swear to Jesus he looks surprised.'

'I thought Jesus stopped talking to you years ago.' Duo spun around in his chair and dropped his chin onto his arms. 'Look, if we all agree on this, then I hate to break the bad news, but Narcotics has to drop the case. It's protocol.'

'The meth doesn't disappear just because it's not related to the homicide,' Wufei protested.

'Yeah, but the homicide was only a Preventers-level crime because of Benito's record, and Narcotics was only involved because we thought Benito was connected to the meth. If the meth is just some random coincidence after all, then it's just a local crime. No meth, no Narc. We've got to kick the case back to you.'

'But we're already well into the investigation. Surely we can work something out.'

'Rules are pretty clear,' Cuartero shrugged. 'Give me a minute and we'll print everything for you. I have a preliminary report due in from our lab on the meth, not that it matters now, but I'll fax it over when it comes. You never know.'

'Oh, yeah, and I got an eight-a-m meeting with that other kid's lawyer tomorrow,' Alvarez added. 'Guess that's on you now. Address is in my notes, hold on.'

Wufei did not look happy. Neither did Duo, but he let it go with a sigh. He retrieved the tape for them, putting it back in its new plastic case. 'So Roque came through. What'd you tell him again?'

'That you'd dropped Preventers, me specifically,' Heero said, 'and--'

'And fuck your mother,' Duo finished. 'Nice touch. I'll drop in on him soon and spin him a yarn about it. You know, I wonder-- he may have recognised you. He didn't say anything? No hints?'

'You don't think he would have come out with it?' Heero tucked the tape into an evidence bag and pocketed it. 'That would put you in danger.'

'You've done a pretty good job of keeping your face out of the news. Quat's the only one who gets real recognition these days.' Duo chewed it over, pulling a boot up onto his chair to pick at the laces. 'Maybe it doesn't matter. Even if he does recognise you. So what if you're a Gundam Pilot too? Both of you. That doesn't make us simpatico. You're Preventers, and so far as Roque knows I've spent the last several years on the other side of the law. No reason for us to be anything to each other now.'

'It might even give weight to the story about Preventers trying to pull you in. They'd send someone who'd be most persuasive. Someone you used to know and trust. Maybe that's what he meant-- it mattered to you, that we were Preventers,' Heero said. 'Maybe you should lay low for a while.'

'No. Better to confront it. I can spin it either way, but if I try to hide from it he'll think something's up and it gives him time to wonder about me. Never give anyone time or reason to wonder about you.'

'No,' Heero murmured. 'No, you always confront. You do, don't you.'

'I guess.' Duo cocked his head. 'Don't like things to fester. Enough goes wrong on its own, you know?' He pressed his lips together, then stood abruptly. 'Hey, can I ask you for something? Before we hand this over officially?'

'Of course,' Wufei said. 'About the perp?'

'The perp? No. Micco. Just don't lose sight of the missing kid in all of this, please? He's been out there for days now, and now we know what scared him off. For all we know he thinks there's a guy on a murderous rampage who's planning on tracking him down. That's the connection you should be looking at-- did this guy know about Micco and Jesse, or was he after Benito from something he did before he adopted his new identity? And if it was all about revenge, why race off the kid and forget to clean him up afterward? The perp has to know the kid might be able to identify him.' Duo pointed at the tape in Heero's jacket. 'Just don't give up looking for Micco, that's all I'm saying.'

Wufei almost spoke. He cleared his throat instead. He nodded once.

'We won't,' Heero said for him. 'And we'll let you know if we find anything. Find Micco.'

'Thanks.' Duo squeezed Wufei's shoulder. 'Hey, this time it's my turn to buy coffee. Send you back on the road with a hot cuppa while you wait for the case file.'

 

**

 

Heero met Wufei the next morning at the lawyer's office. It was raining again. They were headed into the season for it. It lent the day a muggy, not-quite-chilly air, and Heero popped his collar against it, irritated by the weather, irritated by having to trek across town, irritated that Wufei was late for the appointment and that it didn't even matter, because the lawyer was late, too.

Wufei showed nearly twenty minutes after time, slipping into the shabby little lobby shaking droplets off a crumpled newspaper he was using as an umbrella. 'I don't want to talk about it,' he cut Heero off. 'Are we ready for her?'

'She's not here yet.' Heero had been sitting on the only chair in the lobby-- it wasn't properly a lobby, really, just an ante-room to the offices beyond, and he'd even tried the doors, but they were locked. There was a secretary's desk with a phone line, and an answering machine that had his message from the night previous confirming the appointment. It had been checked at least once before Heero himself had checked it.

'Nothing?' Wufei checked out the window into the small car lot in back. 'Someone is here.'

'I don't think so.' Heero mimed listening at the doors. He shrugged.

'I never thought I'd say it, but you're too subtle.' Wufei binned his newspaper, and dried his hands on his sleeves. 'Well,' he said loudly. 'I say we begin with what's in plain view. We can wait on the warrant to get past the doors and into the locked cabinets.'

'Why would that--'

The door on the left banged open. 'Oh, uh, good morning!' a man in a rumpled suit greeted them hastily. 'Didn't hear anyone in here. You boys been waiting long?'

Wufei looked smugly at Heero, who tried to just set his jaw and let it pass. 'Yes,' he said. 'I have been. I knocked. Repeatedly.'

'Bad ear,' the man said. 'Water polo. Can I help you with something? Policemen?'

'Preventers.' Wufei displayed his badge briskly. 'We had an appointment with Ms Hollister. Where is she?'

'Monika? No idea, sir, no idea.' He was inching toward the secretary's desk. He banged a drawer closed with his knee and flipped a folder closed, shuffling a few other papers atop it.

'Call her,' Wufei suggested.

'Oh, of course. Let's try that, then.'

'No need.' The front door was swinging open, and a middle-aged woman stood there ushering in a young boy. Jesse Olmeda, a slim, short boy with tan skin and a mop of curly dark hair. He looked a young eleven, not nearly fourteen. 'We stopped for breakfast,' the woman said. 'I hope that's a good enough excuse, officers? We brought you waffles, if it helps your mood any.'

'Agents.' Heero found himself holding a plastic take-away box. It smelled strongly of syrup. Jesse Olmeda stared sullenly at him, and dropped his eyes when Heero looked at him. 'Preventers have agents,' Heero said, 'like Agent Boone on TV. Thanks, for the waffles.'

Hollister had been trying to annoy him. Duo was better at it. And Heero had a lot of practise at playing along. He flipped open the container, and dipped a finger in a drip of syrup and whipped cream. When he licked it off, the boy bit his lip to hide a smile. Duo might have been better at that, too, but it was a start.

'Your office?' Wufei asked Hollister, quite politely. 'Or perhaps our office would be more comfortable.'

'Outside,' Heero said.

'You may have noticed it's Noah's flood outside, _Agent_ ,' Hollister snapped.

'It's drizzling,' Heero corrected her. 'And you have a shelter in back. I like the open air. I came to Earth because I wanted to breathe real air. Didn't you, Jesse?'

Jesse's head came up. 'You're colonial?' he asked shyly.

Heero nodded. 'Both of us.'

Jesse looked hopefully at his lawyer. She sighed. 'All right,' she agreed. 'But you address your questions to me, Agents. And you observe a fine line here. He's a minor and he hasn't been accused of anything, is that understood?'

There was a bench outside, and Heero took a spot on it before Hollister could, and patted the seat next to him for Jesse. Wufei went to the edge of the car shelter, and wandered back slowly, his hands in his pockets. Hollister stayed no farther than a foot away, her arms crossed over her chest, turning her lapel up against the misty gusts of wind.

'We know what happened to Father Benito,' Heero said finally. 'And we know it wasn't you or Micco who did it.'

Jesse let out an explosive breath. 'You do?'

Wufei found Heero's eyes. 'There's a video,' he said. 'We saw the man who did it.'

'If you have evidence, then what are we doing here?' Hollister demanded.

'Trying to find Micco,' Heero said. 'When was the last time you saw him, Jesse?'

'I...' Jesse sought support from his lawyer, who pursed her lips and didn't immediately tell him to answer.

'Micco is on the tape,' Heero said. 'We know he met Benito that night. And that he left before Benito was killed. But Micco's been missing since then. We just want to find him and be sure he's all right. Find out what he knows, so we can close this case.' Jesse had small hands, with bitten fingernails. The quick on each finger was sore and red from worry.

'We know what Benito did to you,' Wufei added then, somberly. 'What he did to Micco. And what he did to a lot of other boys. Before he came to San Francisco, even.'

'Do you know where Micco would try to go? Where he'd run to?' Heero waited, but Jesse was chewing his lip. 'I have a friend,' Heero told him. 'He's colonial, too. And he's smart, like Micco. He'd know how to run away in a city like this. They'd never find him. Except maybe me. If I had to go looking for Duo, the first place I'd look is Golden Gate Park. He loves it there. You ever been? It's so huge you can just walk all day and I bet Duo would find a place to just hunker down at night and hide away. Maybe he'd just snuggle up with one of the buffalo.'

Jesse almost smiled again, before he caught himself. 'What's a buffalo?'

'It's a big wild animal. As big as a cow, but shaggier, like they're wearing a big old carpet on their backs.'

Jesse sucked in a breath that shook just a little. He pulled out his wallet from his pocket. He tugged a folded card from his wallet, and reluctantly passed it to Heero.

'Thank you,' Heero said, and unfolded it. It was a postcard. He held it to the light, and passed it to Wufei. Wufei looked at it for just a moment, and nodded. It was a picture of the San Francisco marina district.

'Where did you get this?' he asked Jesse.

'It's Micco's.'

'Did you take it from his bunk? We didn't find anything at the orphanage.'

'Micco gave me this,' he said so softly Heero only barely heard him. 'He came to see me the night-- the night Father Benito died. I didn't know that had happened until later. Micco didn't tell me that, just that he was going to go, and he'd try to come back for me later, if he could.'

Heero inhaled slowly. 'We'll find him,' he said.

 

**

 

Even with teams of local police helping with the sweeps, it took them another two days. They found Micco. Lodged under a dock, his arm caught in a crevasse of wood and rope.

'He did it on purpose,' Duo judged. He crouched by the body, holding a kerchief over his nose. The bloated corpse was pale and smelled both briny and rotten. Micco had been dead for days, maybe even since the night of the murder. Fish had attacked his fingers and face, but his blonde hair and red jacket, just like he'd been in the video, were still poignantly the same. Duo used a gloved finger to touch the boy's pockets, and found them empty. 'He must have come down here when the water was low, thought he could hide out for the night. He wouldn't have known about the tides. He lodged himself in, went to sleep, and woke up in five feet of water. Drowned before he could get himself loose.'

'And took the perp's ID with him,' Heero said. 'You know we might never have another chance at it. The technicians got nothing off of that tape. We'll never know who killed Benito.'

'I wish I had.' Duo looked up at him with dry angry eyes. 'Isn't that what we're all thinking? I'll say it. I wish I'd fucking killed him, because whether he drowned the kid or not he killed Micco. And who knows how many others went a bad way because of him? I ever meet the guy who burned that murderer, I'll shake his fucking hand.'

'Duo.' Wufei crunched the damp sand to them, to stand near as he could under the dark, barnacled slats of the dock. 'You should be careful saying things like that,' he murmured. 'The locals hear you. You never know who else is listening.'

'I don't care.' Duo swiped his nose on his sleeve. 'I don't give a damn. Life is supposed to get better. That's what we fought for, isn't it? That's why we fought a war.'

'I don't know,' Heero said. 'I don't remember anymore.'

'He almost made it out.' Duo wiped his nose again. 'Where he would have gone, I wonder.'

'Where would you have gone?' Wufei asked. 'Where is it even possible to go, when you're thirteen and running from everything. Not all of us are lucky enough to be given Gundams.' Overhead, a siren approached, growing louder until it parked right over them. 'The ambulance,' Wufei said. 'They're here for Micco. If you've seen everything you needed, Duo.'

'I—'

They all knew Duo didn't have any need to stay. He hadn't had any need to come at all, but they'd all known he would. Wufei ducked his head when Duo hesitated, and nodded.

'I'll give you a minute,' he said, and left them, climbing out up the berm to meet the coroner.

'It's not right,' Duo said.

Heero settled on his ankles next to Duo. 'They won't all end this way.'

'But some of them do. Why this one? He's just a kid. Benito's dead and can't rot in prison where he belongs.'

'Benito was punished. Any way you look at it.' He breathed through his mouth, exhaling hard and staring at the lay of the braid on Duo's shoulder instead. 'Tomorrow you'll remember that.'

'I'm not too good at thinking about tomorrow.' Heero couldn't look at the kid anymore; Duo wouldn't look away.

'Tomorrow happens anyway,' Heero said. 'Duo. Let them take Micco. It's time.'

Duo's face was stubbornly still, but he swallowed with difficulty. 'One more unsolved case. I hate this city sometimes.'

Heero breathed. He put out his hand, and took Duo's in his fingers. He wrapped it tight.

'I know,' he said. 'I'm glad you stay.'


	3. Zechs - One

November AC 199

 

'And we're such noble friends that we owe this debt to each other,' Zechs said acidly. 'You put me away for my own good. I go because conscience demands it.'

'If not conscience, how about regulation?' Une retorted. She tossed her gloves to the table and followed them with her scarf, scattering wet from the heavy snowfall outside to her desk. 'No-one here will cover for you. No-one can, even if we wanted to. You make it impossible, Zechs. Since your return from Mars you've been rubbing it in our faces.'

'I only returned from Mars because you recalled our mission!' He forestalled his own rising temper by raising both hands, cutting her off. 'I'm fit. I'll take-- and pass-- any physical exam.'

Une planted her palms on the desktop, staring him down. 'Empty your pockets,' she said.

Zechs set his jaws. 'You have no call to invade my personal privacy.'

'And you have no call to refuse me, unless you're hiding something.'

'Preventers don't give up their citizenry just because they take up the badge, Une!'

'You gave up the right to protest search and seizure of any personal property related to the badge, including the uniform you're wearing, the office you wear it in, the car you drive to get here, and the hotel you're sleeping in while you're on Earth. That's part of the oath.' Une stared him down eyeball to eyeball, daring him to say he rescinded that oath, daring him to walk out on it.

It had been easy, once, to ignore her. To avoid her, because she was just one more of Treize's projects, his pets, albeit a crazier one, a dangerous one, and she'd been the one to do the things Zechs wouldn't, couldn't. To look at her now was to think it impossible-- impossible that this woman, this woman had ever worn a uniform that wasn't proud, that came with bloody history on its sleeves, a uniform that was born in treachery and murder and buried itself in vainglorious empire. He'd been inside it, that world, that society, that secret. Been inside it and walked away from it, to something that was arguably worse; and Une had let him back in when they buffed it bright, put a badge of Law on it, called it Prevention, and called it Good.

Mars had been more or less the end of his human contact, his emotional attachments. Noin had followed him back to Earth because she was Noin, and he'd almost begun to expect it. But he'd left everything else buried there. The life he'd been born to and hadn't lived, the family who'd died without him, the sister who'd been better than him and would carry on their name the way it was meant to be, not dirtied as he'd made it at Libra. He'd left quite a lot of himself there, too, and he wasn't so far gone he didn't know what Une meant. He hadn't gone a day without a pill since before leaving Mars. He hadn't gone an hour without one since arriving on Earth. If Une hadn't confronted him on it, he wouldn't have tried to stop. Not a life. Not a life the way most people who were twenty-five and handsome and healthy would recognise it, but he was not most people, and he hadn't been, not since he was six years old and watching tanks roll past the gates of Sanq Palace.

He sat in the chair before her desk, the one near the window. The leather was cold, and it wrapped him in a chill. He said, 'Years ago you would have gone running to him in joy over this.'

Une released a derisive little exhale of air. She sat, as well, sweeping her skirt beneath her, leaning back with crossed legs. 'He wouldn't have believed it. He never did. Even at the end, he still believed you had a grand plan.' She shifted the papers on her desk, and found a small card. She extended it to him. 'But he still would have offered exactly what I'm offering now. Go to the clinic. It's a discreet program. You'll spend a month there and we'll call it some kind of reconnaissance. No-one will be the wiser.'

'And I'll be a good little soldier then.' He took the card, but tossed it away. 'Forgive me if I suspect your charity, Une. We have no good will between us.'

'No, we don't. But there's a great deal of good will between myself and your sister, the Princess Relena.'

'Relena?' Zechs sat up stiffly. 'She knows?'

'My God, you do actually care.'

'Damn you,' he said tightly. 'Double damn you if you carried tales.'

'I didn't tell her,' Une answered him calmly. 'As I said, Zechs, you hardly trouble to hide your habit. The tale carries itself. Or do you forget that you're not an invisible character here? There are plenty of people who are very interested in what you do and who you buy it from.'

Zechs shoved himself to his feet. 'Send me back to Mars.'

'No.' Une regarded him indifferently, unintimidated, though he tried it, looming over her desk, scowling down at her. 'You'll go to the clinic,' she said. 'And when you're finished there you'll behave yourself admirably in public. And in private, where it intersects with your work.'

'And you'll be the arbiter of what does and doesn't intersect with my work.'

'Yes,' Une said. 'As it happens, I will. And you know the only alternative to that.'

Zechs inhaled sharply. 'Give me the address,' he said through gritted teeth.

 

**

 

They had to cut open the suit to get to me, Treize told him. His eyes were pale, looking inward, on the memory, not at Zechs and Une and Noin who sat with him. The fire in the hearth was dying, the embers only barely glowing. The wine in their cups was low as they sipped it gone, except for Treize's cup, barely touched, forgotten in his hand. His fingers stroked rhythmically at the hidden wound in his thigh. I was trapped. It's every pilot's worst nightmare. I heard them cutting the suit open, but I knew it was too late. I knew I would die.

But you didn't, Zechs said, reaching to cover his hand, stilling it with gentle pressure. They reached you in time.

But I had already accepted my death. Treize inhaled as if only then remembering how. I surrendered to it. I held my flesh in my hands-- my blood-- and I accepted that it would be my end. And I thought of... I thought of nothing but--

Noin stared uncomfortably away at the breeze stirring the drapes. Zechs stared at the hand he held, clenched now in a fist, the nails digging into the palm, the knuckles white. Une stared intently at Treize's face, though, her own eyes vivid with excitement. What? she whispered, rapt.

Treize looked up. They sent us there without cover, you know. Cadets and junior officers into an ambush-- but it wasn't an ambush. We had actionable intelligence. We had warning, and they sent us in anyway. They said it was probably a hoax, probably a lie, and they sent us there to die. The colonials, they don't care if they kill children in uniforms-- they prefer it. It's a war of attrition. The more of us they kill as cadets, the fewer of us there are to fight as fully-fledged soldiers of the Alliance. And the truth is that our commanders simply don't give a damn. They're corrupt or they're lazy or they're secretly in league with the Resistance-- it doesn't matter. They sent us in there to die for reasons we'll never know, but fifty of us flew in that day and only seven of us came out. That's what I was thinking. That's all I could think. It's all I can think now. If we want to live, if we want to win, we do it ourselves. Without them.

We're with you, Une said immediately. You know we're with you.

With you on what? Noin demanded, turning back in surprise. It's not that we don't agree, Treize. You know we do, and I think what happened to you is awful. But what can we do except what we already agree on? Try to rise the ranks as quickly as possible and change things from within.

No. No, that's not good enough. Treize set his wine aside, covered Zechs' hand with his. It must be more than that. That's why I wanted to speak to you all tonight. The Alliance has become a monstrosity. A father turning on its own children. We have one clear choice. To defend ourselves. I don't say it will be easy. But we begin our plans now, tonight, and keep our secrets well, and one day we can turn on this monster and cut it off at the head.

Une stood. We're with you, she said.

Treize nodded. Thank you, old friend. And you, Lucretia? Will you think on it?

She was silent for a long time. I don't know, Treize. What you're talking about is--

Necessary. You know it. You believe it, in your gut. In your heart.

She bowed her head. I'm with you. I'm in.

Zechs? Treize gripped his hand tightly. Without you, I'm nothing. I will fail without you with me.

Zechs brought his other hand to Treize's, and they held each other close, bending to touch their foreheads. He felt Treize's shaky exhale against his cheek.

To the end, Zechs promised him. To hell and back, my friend.

 

**

 

He woke abruptly from a roiling nightmare. His pulse was hammering, head pounding. He was clammy sweat from head to toe, soaking his sheets. His cell stank with it, echoed with his ragged gasps. He struggled free of his bed, pitched forward onto his feet. No, not a good idea. He had no balance, had no--

Had no vision beyond his nose; everything vanished into a strange dark blur, his hands seeking the wall, his hoarse call for-- no. He had pride yet. He wouldn't call for help. He could do this. Crawling like a child, if he had to. He had to. His bare knees scraped the floorboards, his palms itching and aching. He found the door to the bath by feeling along the corners. In serious trouble. But must not, must not let them see him weak. Must not let them see him fail. He shoved at the latch, clawed it until it opened, and he fell to the toilet and fumbled up the lid and emptied the paltry contents of his stomach into it.

He coughed until he could breathe again. His knees hurt, on the cold bath tile. He'd gone out of bed in only his underwear, and now that was soiled with his own sick. They'd offered him a slow drug-controlled detox and he'd disdained it, sure he could weather this like a man, but the headache... his stomach wouldn't stop turning, empty as it was, and he heaved again, dry as a bone, heaved until he choked helplessly, clinging to the damn wretched toilet.

'You gonna flush that anytime soon?'

He jumped, or tried to, jangled nerves sawed rough. His eyes were tearing and he couldn't see more than a brown wobble in the door behind him. He wiped his face, and the figure resolved.

'I know you,' he rasped.

'Not Biblically.' A boy. The one with the braid, who had piloted the Gundam with the scythe. The boy reached over Zechs' shoulder and emptied the toilet. 'You okay?'

Zechs stripped paper from the roll and wiped his mouth. 'I didn't hear knocking.'

Maxwell. That was his name. Duo Maxwell. He looked at Zechs for what felt like forever, but was probably only seconds. He lifted his foot and kicked the door with his heel, twice. Knocking.

'Nobody home.' Zechs tossed the paper away. His head was awful. But his stomach was settling. Maybe. He'd made a mess on the floor. He tried to rip more paper down for it, and pulled the roll off the wall. It went away into the bleary nothingness beyond his tunnel vision.

'I was having a pretty shitty week,' Maxwell said, 'but, in toto, this makes me feel better.'

It occurred to him only slowly. 'You're here,' he said. He pulled a towel down from the rack to cover himself, to wrap himself against the cold and the shivers that had taken him over. 'You're here.'

'Obviously.'

'No. Here.' He couldn't say it better than that, frustrated. 'You're like me.'

'Preventer,' Maxwell said, and bent to help him with the towel. He tucked a corner into Zechs' hand, draped an edge over Zechs' bare leg. 'War hero, or war demon, depending on who you ask, I guess.'

'Addict.'

Their eyes met. Maxwell looked away first. He rose to his feet. 'I'm not like you,' he said briefly. 'Clean yourself up. They take care of the rooms, but they do expect us to wash ourselves.'

His hands were trembling. He rubbed his wrist over the sour taste in his mouth, and gathered himself together. He could stand, if he tried-- he wouldn't crawl again, not in front of Maxwell. If anything, this was better. With an enemy to fight, he could stand taller than alone with the tatters of his dignity. 'Then you can go away,' he said, using the toilet to leverage himself upward. The towel slipped, and he only just caught it, holding it awkwardly. 'You can leave feeling refreshed. Or superior. Or whatever it is you feel at this moment.'

'I have a hunch I was already superior.' Maxwell flipped on the bath fan.

'Is this part of therapy?' He managed the sink, even if the water emerged icy cold. His fingers went numb, and he shuddered as he splashed his face, his hair, his chest. He rinsed his mouth and spat it out. There was a toothbrush and paste on the ledge. He dropped the brush before he managed to get the paste uncapped, the paste smeared on the brush, and dropped the towel before he could brush his teeth. He almost gave up in despair, but for Maxwell's presence there, judging him.

'What?' he ground out.

'Waiting to see if you collapse on your way to a piss.'

He spat a thin mouthful of froth. 'Did Une send you to watch me? I already agreed to do her damn programme. She doesn't have to send spies.'

'I'm not here to spy on you, Lord.' Maxwell kicked the door wide and stepped back. 'They were talking about the new guy in the cafeteria. Sounded familiar. I wanted to see for sure.'

'And now you've seen.' He took advantage of the space Maxwell had vacated and brushed past the smaller man. His knees were weak, and he collapsed back to his bed rather than sitting, as he planned to, but he supposed it was a moot point anyway. He dragged his damp sheet up over his chest. 'Is there any possible chance you're carrying something other than a big mouth and a bad attitude?'

He meant it mostly as sarcasm. He was still mostly convinced of his first guess, that Une had sent him as a watcher; it might have been paranoia, but the entire world was on a crazy tilt, at the moment, and it felt as possible as anything else. But Maxwell stood there, ghost-like at the edge of his vision, wavering on the edge of hallucination and reality. He nudged closed the open apartment door, and hesitated there just a moment longer. Then he tossed a small plastic baggie to Zechs' bed.

It took a moment to realise what it was. Pills. Pills, partially mashed to dust. He didn't ask why. His fingers were so spastic he struggled to pull open the bag, and he scattered more than he managed to spill onto his palm. He licked it onto his tongue, a handful of the mess, without so much as asking what it was. It hurt his gums, tabs catching dry against his throat, and he coughed as he reached for his water glass. He swallowed thickly until he managed to get them down. But the relief. The sweet relief was instantaneous, cool as ice in his veins, beating back the headache, soothing the raging nausea in his belly, deadening the mad ants who itched under his skin. He buried a sob in his arm, pressed his hot face into his pillow.

'They'll know in the morning you had it.'

Maxwell. Maxwell was still there. He'd forgotten. It had been hours, it seemed. Or seconds. Only microseconds.

'Mandatory tests,' Maxwell said. 'They'll know in the morning. You hear me? If you tell them it was me I'll tell them you're lying.'

He had to unclench his fist from the baggie, and shoved it to the floor. The pills rolled and fell. 'I don't care.'

'You get three strikes before they kick you out.' Maxwell opened the door. 'Let them help you through this part next time. Methadone is better than dying in your own vomit.'

'Thank you. Get out.' He curled, sluggishly pulling at his blanket. His mind was going fuzzy. Whatever the pills had been, it was blessed numbness now, and his body was too wretchedly worn out to fight it. His hand dropped, nerveless.

Maxwell laughed. It echoed in Zechs' ears, a soft bitter chime. Maxwell covered him with the blanket. He bent sweep up the pills, and hid them away in a pocket. He set the waterglass near, and crouched to look Zechs eyeball to eyeball.

'You owe me,' he said, and that was the last thing Zechs remembered.

 

**

 

They did find him out. They woke him for a urine sample at six in the morning, but it never even went that far. The very fact that he wasn't a wreck spoke for itself.

It earned him a stern lecture from the director, Purceli, and an interrogation from the duty nurses, who were almost as good at their business as OZ's trained specialists had been. But if they knew it was Duo Maxwell, they didn't bring up his name. If that had even been real. He wasn't entirely sure, now, what had been dreamed and what had been true. He didn't think he'd conjured a Gundam Pilot, that Gundam Pilot in particular, out of whole cloth, but it didn't make sense that Maxwell would be here, either, and would be moved to help him for no reason at all. Not with their history.

But he seemed to have used up any compassion he'd been owed by the staff, who put him through a punishing day in retaliation for his crime. He was set on a structured detox with methadone without much choice in the matter beyond a brief instruction to sign a paper. He did it, recognising, at least, that while he might be able to do it alone, it wasn't worth the suffering, and Maxwell was unlikely to rescue him twice.

After half a day in the clinic getting poked and prodded by the nurses, he was thrown at a counselor, who pitilessly dragged him on a tour of the centre. The methadone tablets made him drowsy, made his mind feel flat and his body oddly disconnected from his thoughts, disobedient to his commands, but he went where he was told, resigned to it. The dormitories, of which he'd been only barely aware last night, already detoxing when he'd checked in. The clinic, on the two floors below, and a wide green courtyard with a small garden and even a pretty limestone fountain framed with snow that drew his dull stare. The annex where he would spend the majority of his forty-five-day sentence here, learning, he was told, how to live without acting on his addiction. He tried to pay attention, to at least glean a little intelligence about what that would impose on him, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

'You get lunch and two hours of free time before afternoon sessions,' the counselor told him. 'You may not feel like eating right away on the methadone, but you should try to get something in your stomach. Not eating doesn't help anything. Tea and toast is a good choice. Introduce yourself around if you like, or just sit and take advantage of the quiet. There's a library corner over there by the big windows.'

'Do you have the news?' he asked, dredging up the will to speak for the first time in hours. 'Internet? Can I at least check on my cases?'

'Not allowed here,' the counselor answered promptly. 'All of that ties in to what got you here, wouldn't you think? Take a break, Mr Merquise. You might even find you like it.'

'You can keep to yourself your guesses about what “got me here”,' Zechs told him flatly, and went to stand in the queue for tea.

It did make him feel better, if only for the ritual of something familiar. He filled a plain ceramic cup with hot water and chose from the teabags available-- only decaffeinated, he noted, annoyed at what seemed to be the pervasive attitude that the Centre had to control every choice for them lest they make the wrong one even by chance-- and settled on an innocuous orange pekoe, mostly for the pleasant smell. Une's choice of facility had a certain institutionalness about it, which no doubt suited her notions of what such places were supposed to be. No country club rehabilitation here. This place smacked of work ethic and accountability. He was a statistic here, not Agent, not even-- he could admit to reluctant pleasure in this one aspect at least-- Prince, which was all too possible. The war was only a few years over, and he was recognised all too often. What had that counselor just called him? Mr Merquise. Bland enough name for someone who was indistinguishable from anyone else who couldn't control their baser flaws. Reduced to his own lowest denominator.

He stood sipping his tea and staring about the cafeteria for nearly ten minutes before he realised what he was staring at. Duo Maxwell was here.

He left his tea on the return counter and crossed the room slowly. Yes. Definitely Duo Maxwell; so he hadn't imagined it. And, now that he was clearer than the night before, he was fairly sure he'd known that Maxwell was on Earth, and had joined the California Headquarters unit of Preventers. Une had been pleased at landing a Gundam Pilot for permanent employ, after finding so many of the former Resistance openly averse to participating in her pet project. Colonials were suspicious by nature and not many had been willing to join Preventers long-term after the last major conflicts of war had died out. She'd wanted Chang Wufei, but the boy who'd killed Treize Khushrenada was not yet a welcome addition to a group that hosted so many former Specials officers. Maxwell had been safer for testing the waters, Maxwell had been willing, Maxwell had been savvier to the politics and had known what he was getting into, she'd said, and Zechs had shrugged, because he'd been on his way to the Mars posting and had never expected to have to care, one way or another.

He took the leather easy chair beside Maxwell's couch. There was bright sun outside, reflecting on a blanket of fresh snowfall over the grounds. He squinted away from it as it pained his eyes. Maxwell was curled into his chair, making himself smaller than he should have seemed at-- what, twenty. Nineteen. He wore a baggy black sweater that left him pale-faced and grey-eyed. He chewed relentlessly at his finger, already bitten to the quick of the nail.

'Une sent you,' Zechs said.

Maxwell didn't turn. There was a thin line of blood on his finger. He bit with his teeth, and stared out the window.

'Maxwell,' Zechs said. 'Une sent you.'

Maxwell blinked. 'What?'

'Une sent you,' he said a third time, impatient. 'She must have. Why else would we both be here? She wouldn't be so foolish. She'd be duty-bound to preserve our anonymity.'

'That's our job, not hers.' Maxwell took his finger out of his mouth, but only to replace it with his thumb instead. 'Maybe she's teaching us a lesson about not shitting where you work.'

His head was too swimmy to pursue that. 'I know what I know,' he said stubbornly.

Maxwell finally glanced at him. 'You shouldn't wear blue,' he muttered absently. 'It's not your colour.'

He swallowed back an angry retort. 'I wasn't packing to go on the prowl.'

'I'm a little busy here. What do you want?'

He was no longer sure. Whatever he'd thought he could accomplish, whatever he'd thought he could get, it wasn't on offer. Maxwell's face was as closed to him as a statue's. It wasn't even a power play. It really wasn't. Maxwell stared out of the window, his teeth picking deeper into his thumbnail, lost to his surroundings.

Zechs stood slowly. He cleared his throat and said, 'Nothing worth taking you away from your busy day.'

Maxwell inhaled. 'What? Oh. You.'

Zechs had the distinct impression he was forgotten as soon as he stepped away. He looked back, but Maxwell sat where he'd been left, unmoving.

He made an effort to be persuaded by common sense. If Une had sent a spy, and by the time he'd forced himself to eat dinner he'd passed most of that suspicion, then he had to think said spy would at least attempt a few spy-like activities. Maxwell stayed ensconced in his corner for their free time and went to his evening appointments, which were on a different floor than Zechs', and ate dinner at a different table, went to the night nature walk rather than the inside film activity as Zechs did, and disappeared into his own room at lights out. Zechs knew because he marked Maxwell's comings and goings obsessively, which, he had to admit, made him look rather more like a spy than Maxwell.

His morning methadone came with a new schedule. Exercise at seven, followed by breakfast with the A Group, on what appeared to be a binary rotation between the residents, in order to manage the number of them without crowding the cafeteria. That explained why they'd been hustled out precisely on time the night before. Group therapy for a nauseatingly long session, a full four hours. Classes in the afternoon, all of which struck him as judgmental in title-- Preventing Relapse. Habit Breaking Behavioural Study. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous Introductions. Integration and Goal Setting. Building Confidence. A generous enough amount of that promised free time, called “reflection hours” on his rota. And a full list of insipid choices he apparently had to make to fill his open afternoon slot. That was worst of all, and he could only imagine the smirk Une must have had for herself when she'd read over the options. Pet Visit. Zechs was not particularly drawn to animals and never had been, even as a child. Worse was Crafts, though. He had no intention of knitting his way to sobriety, even if it meant his freedom. Book Reading Club. Bingo. Hiking had some brief promise, though he had only wan interest in leaving the building, and then only because it would get him away from the inanity of the rest of his so-called sentence here. Resume Writing and Interview Skills. He might want a different job, after this was over. Yoga and Nutrition. Church service. With a grimace, Zechs selected the yoga. It was like enough to exercise that it might occupy his mind away from the dreariness of the rest of his days here.

Maxwell had chosen the hiking. He remembered that, right as he handed over his paper to the counselor who waited on it. She walked away before he could reconsider. Well. Maybe that was for the best.

He was itchy under the skin, and the methadone didn't cover it was much the second day as it had the first. He had a tinnitus-like buzz in his head, preoccupying him so much that he only managed a few wrist curls and leg pumps in the gym, a fraction of his usual workout. He would be out of shape by the time he left this place. At breakfast he barely swallowed his eggs and toast. He had a bad mood building, and it wasn't all grump about the morning's poor direction. It was about the way the morning was going to end. Group therapy. Talking. He could kill Une for that alone. He had nothing to say to people he'd known his entire life, if there any of those left alive any more. Less than nothing to say to strangers, much less deep, dark confessions.

But he would survive. It was what he did. Even when he was determined not to.

So he followed the wall placards to Room 1109 and chose a chair at random from the circle in the middle of the room. He did not read the no-doubt inspirational posters; he did not avail himself of biscuits or coffee from the refreshments table; he did not look at the other members of the group he'd be stuck with for the next month as they arrived. He sat, and he prepared himself to sit here for as long as it took. He'd done unpleasant things before. This wouldn't be any worse than cleaning latrines as a cadet. Easier than ordering men into battle knowing they wouldn't return. Easier even than the endless boredom on Mars, where even when he wanted to be alone the vast emptiness of the colony ate at him. He'd get more than his fill of people here. He'd learn a little gratitude for the mystic silence of the Red Planet.

He almost had a handle of himself, thinking that, until he looked up and found Duo Maxwell taking a seat across from him.

He tried to swallow it down, but the night's paranoia came racing back. Maxwell in his therapy group? Present to listen while he bared his soul, forced to recount detail after detail of his drug use? So it could go into Une's file. She wasn't above illicitly collecting information on her subordinates, just as Treize had taught her.

He had no chance to pursue it before one of the Centre's counselor's entered, calling order by clapping her hands and taking an open seat at the circle. 'Good morning,' she said, offering a bright smile about the room. 'Do we have everyone?'

'Riggs is in the bathroom,' Maxwell answered, and pulled his feet up to the seat of his chair, tucking his knees under his chin. 'He says it's food poisoning.'

The counselor heaved out a breath. 'Again. Well. How remarkable. York, would you look in on Riggs? Tell him we're starting, but don't wait for him. Come right back.' She marked attendance in a notebook, and stopped when she got to Zechs. 'Good morning,' she repeated, laying down her pencil to look at him directly. He gazed impassively back at her. 'I'm Sofia. I'll be leading the morning sessions. You're our newest member.'

'Yes,' Zechs said.

She waited, but he didn't supply anything, determined to make her ask for it directly. He wouldn't negotiate, and he wouldn't provide any information voluntarily. Her smile faltered a little as she realised. Maxwell, Zechs noted, was watching. His lips quirked, and he looked away when Zechs tried to catch his gaze.

'Why don't you introduce yourself,' Sofia urged him.

'Zechs,' he said shortly.

'Where are you from, Zechs.'

'I'm not a local,' he answered carefully. 'I'm here because my work is nearby.'

He was aware of the other people in the circle gaining interest in him, if only because he was fighting the process. Perhaps he'd made a mistake in that. If he'd just provided some bland answers, he might have gone under the radar.

But Sofia at least seemed to have decided not to engage with him just yet. York, a mousy middle-aged man hiding behind large glasses, had returned alone, and shrugged at her; so whoever Riggs was, he wouldn't be joining them. A woman at the coffee table that he'd taken as a participant left quietly. So. A counselor in disguise, or just a guard of some kind, watching for trouble, off to deal with the recalcitrant Riggs. Maxwell had seen it happen, too. He still refused to meet Zechs' eyes, though Zechs tried again to catch him at it.

'Let's get started,' Sofia said. 'Zechs, since you're new to this, we start by suggesting a few topics and see what takes. Chime in when you can. I'm not marking your contributions for quantity or quality, but a certain level of participation is required as part of the programme. Understood?'

'Not precisely,' he replied coolly. 'What's the difference between not marking me for the number of times I speak up and marking me for the number of times I speak up? Are you keeping a tally or not?'

'We're just looking to see if you're actively engaging in the process.' Her smile was fixed and unrevealing. And she turned deliberately away from him before he could follow up with further questions. 'I think today would be a good day to talk about the payoff. What's the payoff for substance abuse? What are we trying to replace? What are we missing? Lamorne, you have something to say?'

'Yeah, I mean, I do,' said the older black man sitting beside her. He hunched forward for her attention, turning his coffee around and around in his hands. 'It's obvious, right? God.'

Zechs set his jaws together. Forty-three days left of this.

'Lamorne called it,' a dark-haired girl said. 'For my two cents, he's absolutely right. I know I'm always thinking about God when I'm snorting.'

'Okay,' Sofia interrupted. 'Let's keep on track. It's a good answer, Lamorne, but it's a personal answer for you. What else? How would it be different for you, Janey?'

The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes. 'What's it matter? If I had it, I wouldn't need coke.'

'We're here to learn how to replace drugs with better things. Healthier choices.' Sofia tapped her pencil slowly against her knee. 'When's the last time you talked to your sister?' she asked then. 'You said last week you were close when you were little. Are you close now?'

Janey suddenly found her hands very interesting. 'Not recently. She went to college. I'm not smart, like her. What do we have to talk about anymore?'

'I think you're very smart. You read all the time, and you built a beautiful model car during Crafts.'

'Out of a damn kit,' Janey muttered, but her cheeks tinged pink.

'Duo?' Sofia asked. 'What about you? What do you think you're looking for, trying to replace?'

Maxwell had his thumbnail between his teeth again. He looked up at his name, but lost interest immediately. 'It's classified,' he said.

Zechs pursed his lips. That was an amusing dodge. He wondered if it was true. Given Maxwell's past, it was possible. In fact, given his own past, and given how much of it had made it into the files in Une's safe, he thought he just have found his own answer.

Sofia had clearly heard it before. She waited a moment, almost as if she were going to move on, but then abruptly chose to challenge it. 'You've been here almost two weeks,' she told Maxwell sternly. 'That excuse doesn't fly, Duo.'

Maxwell looked her full in the face. 'Put in a Freedom of Information request,' he retorted. 'I told them at the front desk.'

'Can you at least try to answer in a general way?'

Their battle of wills lasted almost a minute. Sofia didn't give. Maxwell did. He bit down on his thumb, and said, 'God.'

 

**

 

It took Zechs a week to finish the methadone. There was no especial joy to end it, however: for as little as he'd liked the process, he hadn't realised how much it was masking the actual symptoms of withdrawal. Without the methadone to dull the craving, he was aware of it like never before. The first night without it was agony. He lay awake all hours, thinking longingly, achingly, of codeine, valium, even a cigarette-- anything to take away the edge of need. He dug his fingernails into his palms until he left bloody half-moons, bit his tongue until he tasted copper. He had dozing nightmares, half-dreams in which he re-fought the worst of his duels from the war, tasted frisson of nuclear energy and beam weaponry as mobile dolls and Heero Yuy and Quatre Winner and Alex and Mueller and a dozen half-remembered faces came after him again and again, but whenever he awoke he knew the truth. Sobriety was no cure. He was going to go insane here.

The days went by in a blur. He listened to Maxwell, but it was more a habit from those first unsure hours, sure that Maxwell was there to listen to him. Maxwell said, if anything, even less than Zechs did. When pressed, Maxwell always retreated behind the line that his answers were classified. Zechs mimicked him, because it was easier than thinking of his own excuse, easier than fighting his own war on the staff, easier than figuring out what he would do when Maxwell left and Zechs would be alone here without someone paving the way for him, intentionally or otherwise. Then, too, he was certain of one thing-- Maxwell was still using. Maxwell had given him drugs his first night, and since Zechs had been thoroughly searched on entering the property, he had to assume Maxwell had been too, which meant Maxwell had got the drugs somewhere in the Centre. And Maxwell was just not suffering as much as he was. He refused to believe it was because he was weaker, because he was a lesser man. Even with a two-week lead on detox Maxwell should have shown signs of struggle. And he didn't. He was still using.

In his better moments, his most bitter moments, Zechs knew he was becoming obsessed with Maxwell. He knew why, of course. They were trapped here together, and Maxwell was by far the most interesting thing about the Centre. A Gundam Pilot, which made him at least equal to Zechs in skill and tenacity. A Preventer, which gave them similar background and goals. But more than that. Someone who'd fallen to the same disease. No. Same failing. They were the same in that, and it made Maxwell a mirror. It made Zechs a narcissist, for wanting to stare into it constantly, but he couldn't stop himself. In those endless days at the Centre all he had to distract himself was Maxwell, ticking away the hours of his sanity.

 

**

 

Treize had spent years in physical therapy to treat his injuries from that bad engagement in the colonies. He'd never quite walked right after it, never run again, never fenced at the top of his game, never piloted as well as he had before. For every loss there'd been a gain in determination, though. For everything Alliance had taken away there'd been a tally made, a scorecard written that would be evened out one day. Treize was like that. Personal pain writ large on the scale of history. Zechs had been his brightest pupil in that. He supposed Treize had known it before he had, why they'd gone head to head at Libra. He bought every book that was published about it, but he couldn't bring himself to read them. One day, when it didn't bite so badly. As it was, he used the books as target practise. He could pick off his own name in print at twenty-four paces.

It was still pain, but it was _different_ pain. He wasn't sure if that counted for anything.

 

**

 

'It's classified,' Zechs said flatly.

Sofia pressed the pencil to her lips as if physically gagging herself from speaking. Everyone else in the group was apprehensively still, watching warily.

'Duo, Zechs,' she murmured, 'we need to talk outside. Everyone, take a ten minute break.'

Zechs rose slowly. He'd been expecting this; he'd known they wouldn't get away with it forever, not with both of them pulling the same trick. Maxwell rubbed his eyes wearily, and slouched out after Sofia without waiting for Zechs. So. No last-minute alliance. But that was as Zechs had been expecting, too.

In the hall, Sofia wasted no time on making herself clear. Maxwell leant on the wall, and Zechs put himself at parade rest. Their counselor hugged her book loosely to her chest and looked at them without warmth.

'I've told the Director about your obstructionism,' she said. 'You'll go see him now. Margie will walk with you.'

'We can't be trusted to walk across the campus?'

'No,' Sofia said. 'And you're not welcome back to this group until you change your tune. People come here to heal. Either you make yourself a part of that or you don't, but you don't get to screw it up for other people.' She motioned, and Margie, the other counselor who sat in on their group sessions, stepped forward. 'Go.'

Director Purceli's office on the second floor looked out over the fountain, though it had no other comforts to offer. It was stuffed with books and papers, plain metal file cabinets, and the furniture was cheaper by far than, say, Une's, or even the pre-fab plastics they'd had on Mars. A very old sofa upholstered in worn green velveteen was the sole comfort, and that was where Purceli gestured them to sit. It was a tight fit for the two of them, even with Maxwell curling away from him. It was the closest they'd been since his first night in the Centre, a night that had taken on too many shades of unreality to be remembered whole. He inhaled and could smell Maxwell's shampoo, taste it on his tongue. He breathed more carefully then.

'Tea?' Purceli asked. 'I try to cut myself off at noon, but some days I just need the extra boost.'

'No,' Zechs said.

'Duo? I know you like the apricot zinger. I have a sachet of that.'

Maxwell looked up from his thumbnail. All his fingers were ragged, now, chewed bloody. 'Um,' he said. 'Yeah. Thanks.'

'Of course.' Purceli poured steaming water from an electric kettled plugged in by his window, and handed Maxwell a mug with the Centre's logo. With his hands occupied, Maxwell at least managed to stop chewing on himself. Clever, Zechs thought grudgingly.

Purceli dragged a rolling chair to the sofa, and sat. He was a heavy-set man in his late fifties, at least, putting him more than double either of their ages, and he had a world-weary look to him that seemed sincere enough. Given what he did for a living, he likely heard enough to earn it. That didn't incline Zechs to spill his story for the asking.

Purceli sipped his own tea, and set it on the carpet beside his chair. He said, 'Sofia tells me there's some difficulty with your group therapy.'

Maxwell stared down at his mug and didn't answer. Zechs did. He replied, trying for a polite tone, 'It's not appropriate to have us in a group with housewives and B-list rockstars.'

'You're here because of your disease, not your work habits,' Purceli countered.

'I was here to detox. I'm finished.' He dropped the 'we' for that declaration, knowing he was no longer speaking for them both. Maxwell didn't twitch, didn't indicate by so much as an eyelash that he was guilty of cheating the programme. If it was even a lie-- if he was even listening. His breathing was slow and shallow. He wasn't blinking.

'You've got more than thirty days left in your time,' Purceli noted. 'You don't strike me as a man who makes commitments and fails them. Wouldn't you rather get something out of your time here?'

Zechs clenched his jaws. 'I'm finished with group therapy.'

Unexpectedly, Maxwell's head came up. He said, 'Suck it up. Everyone does group.'

Zechs was left gaping at him. 'You're no more cooperative than I have been,' he protested. 'Why are you--'

'I may not talk about myself but I discuss when it's their turn. It's not just about you. There's ten other people in there.'

'Ten people who are not my problem.'

Purceli didn't seem to know what to make of that venom any more than Zechs did. Finally he said, 'Look, there's a central issue here. I've spoken with your commanding officer. I'm willing to negotiate on the issue of dealing with classified events. We can have private sessions, if you continue to attend group every other session in the meanwhile.'

Good God. That was worse than before. Zechs tried not to show his revulsion on his face, but it was difficult. 'Must we-- must we speak?' If after everything he was going to wind up back at divulging all manner of personal detail before Maxwell, who would after all be in a position to reveal it to Une--

'You have to participate,' Purceli told him unequivocally. 'Where you're able to. Not just willing to.'

Maxwell stuck his nail between his teeth. He dripped tea on his shirt.

'I'll let you know the new schedule when we work it out.' Purceli looked at Zechs then. 'And while you've been extended certain privileges, Duo's right. You're a part of the group here. You can give support and get it, if you're open to it. All right?' He waited, and repeated himself when neither man spoke. 'All right?'

'All right,' Maxwell mumbled.

'All right,' Zechs grated.

'Take the rest of the morning as free time,' Purceli said then. 'Maybe the two of you should try spending some time together. We thought it might be beneficial for you to be in group together, given your similar experiences. Take some time to talk.'

Zechs had been rising to go, but caught himself halfway to his feet. 'Excuse me. You're the one who put us together here?'

'In group, yes.' Purceli sipped his tea. 'The group is always selected based on the personality profile, the addiction profile, professional background, and a number of demographic factors.'

'And the fact that there's only thirty people here?'

'We'd have smaller groups,' Purceli said. 'Like two. As we'll do starting tomorrow with you two.' He rescued Maxwell's mug as it began to droop. 'Have a good morning, son.'

Out in the hall Maxwell pulled ahead of him, his shorter stride working harder on the tile to move faster. Zechs stalked quickly after him, and pulled even within a dozen feet. He caught Maxwell by the arm, holding on even when Maxwell attempted to wrench away from him. He pushed Maxwell against the door of the utility closet, trapping him there with his own body. Maxwell stubbornly glared anywhere but up. Disgusted, Zechs let him go.

'How are you fooling the drug tests?' he demanded.

'You wanna talk a little louder there?'

'Oh, please. No-one but you could hear me.'

Maxwell stuffed his hands into his pockets and headed for the stairwell. He clattered down rapidly, and Zechs set after him again. He met up with Maxwell at the lobby landing and followed him to the cafeteria side doors, to the courtyard and the fountain. It was cold, almost frigid, but the snow beneath their shoes was crisp, not wet, and there was no standing sludge or melting puddles. Zechs almost suggested they stop for their coats, but Maxwell's trajectory had purpose in it, and his stride didn't slow. Zechs tugged his collar up against the breeze and fluffed his hair over it. He followed.

He remembered, as they walked, that Maxwell knew the grounds from his hiking, though they left the obvious path quickly once they neared the woods. The trees had caught most of the snowfall, and soon they walked on fallen leaves and loam, not white ice. Shrub and fallen logs accounted for most the visibility between them and the Centre. And it was silent. An earthly kind of silence, a silence of air whispering and birds chirping sleepily and crickets, but no human noise other than their breath, their passage. Despite himself, Zechs felt the week's tension fading. It wasn't better, exactly, but it was different.

Maxwell stepped wide around an ancient oak and settled between two gnarled roots. Zechs perched uneasily on the damp wood, catching his boot beneath him for support. Maxwell's head was turned away from him, his face dappled with shadow.

'The tests,' he said. 'Answer me.'

Maxwell sighed. 'They say the tests are random, but they're not. I figured out the pattern. It's three-one-three. I know what I can take and when to have it out of my system by the time they come collecting the piss.'

'Why are you still using?'

'What, now you want to share?' Maxwell asked snidely.

'I want to know what you're doing here if you don't intend to get well.'

Maxwell reached into his shirt. His hand emerged with a baggie. Zechs looked keenly at him. It was just like the first night-- a little plastic bag, with pills. Pills like the ones dispensed at the nurse's office inside. Maxwell held it out, and Zechs took it. He held them to the light, but he was already sure. It was a wide assortment of medication, all of it official, all of it prescription. It had to come from the desk. Vicodin. Oxycontin. Xanax and Halcion and Librium.

'How are you getting them?' he asked. 'Who's your seller?'

'I don't have one.' Maxwell picked at the bark of the tree, wearily dropping his head back to the trunk behind him. 'I don't sleep well. My first night I was walking the building. I caught the night nurse raiding the supplies. He's running some kind of scam, probably checking out meds for patients who aren't here but are still technically on the books.'

'Why didn't you turn him in?'

'Why would I? They'd have to kick me out of the programme.'

'That doesn't make any sense.'

'Think like a Preventer,' Maxwell said shortly. 'They'd have to kick me out while they investigated it. Which means I'd have to come back some other time or go somewhere else, and either way it drags this shit out. I keep my mouth shut and some asshole makes a few hundred bucks without hurting anyone.'

'And you keep yourself supplied.'

'I already told you I'm not like you.' Maxwell flung a strip of bark at him. 'I'm an alcoholic,' he said. 'If he'd been trading in Jack Daniels, I'd have a problem. You want a free high, though, be my guest.'

He'd thought that he would be the one confessing. He hadn't really considered what it would be like to hear it from someone else; hadn't truly listened during the group therapy when those other people had confessed their little sins. It hadn't mattered from them. But Maxwell had said it so casually. Alcoholic.

'You're not,' he said, unsure why he even disagreed. 'Or if you are... if you are, why fight it so much here? Why wouldn't you want to be fixed? Cured of your disease?'

Maxwell closed his eyes. 'Why would I want to be fixed? The problem was getting through the day without a drink. Alcohol makes it tolerable. If I can function drunk, that's my business.'

'Exactly. Yes, that's it exactly.' He clenched the baggie in his hand, feeling the pills round against his palm. 'So why did you throw it in my face that I won't participate in the group?'

'Because it's not just about us. Whether we like it or not we're stuck here, and those people do care about getting well.'

'And how is that my responsibility? How does my silence or my addition to discussion change any of that, especially if I don't give it willingly?'

Maxwell opened pale eyes, looking at him directly for the first time, perhaps, since the night he'd come to Zechs' room and given him another bag of pills. He said, 'You still owe me.'

Zechs licked his lips to wet them. 'What do you want?' he asked slowly.

'Just reminding you.'

'Keeping a tab?' He pried open the bag and sorted the pills with a fingertip. His mouth went dry on contact, then watered. He could have it again. No more dull days, no more fitful, long nights full of unfulfilled needs. All for an unnamed price. He looked up at Maxwell's face, and asked himself, really asked himself this time, if it was going to be worth it. His hands were starting to tremble. He could numb the dreams, if he could just numb the dreams for a few nights, it would necessarily mean he'd have to give up this new sobriety...

For whatever good it did him. Maxwell had already said it. It wasn't the high that was the problem. The high made everything else possible. It allowed him to forget what he lived through every time his head hit a pillow at night. The dreams where he climbed out of the wreckage of Libra by clawing out of his own suit were bad, but the dreams in which he suffocated slowly were worse. Sometimes he let himself die, chose to go down with the weight of his own sins, and sometimes Heero Yuy was his executioner, bringing him a swift end as Chang Wufei had done his old friend and enemy Treize. Sometimes he dreamt of battle, of the day he'd been ordered to his own suicide against a thousand mobile dolls, and the dreams were nothing but an endless horde of beam weapons flashing, cutting flesh and metal indiscriminately, a terrifying onslaught that ended only when his body gave out and he awoke gasping in fear and exhaustion. Worst of all was the dream in which the horde was not dolls but suits that held people, soldiers under his command, soldiers who had once been his, OZ and Alliance and Resistance and White Fang, men and women who had been his until he'd turned on them in madness. In that dream, he sent the mobile dolls after them, just as he had at Libra. He sent the mobile dolls after them, and he watched the slaughter from Libra, just watched it happen over and over and over again, and enjoyed it. He always woke from that one desperate for the very relief he held in his hands right now, and he'd never stopped to think about it before.

Why think about it now?

He picked out two large pieces of what had been codeine tabs, and crushed them further between forefinger and thumb. He rubbed the powder against his gums and swallowed the largest crumbs dry. It tasted like acid on his tongue, slow to fade. If he felt any regret about it, it disappeared into the jolt of dizziness that swept him. He closed his eyes, gripping the root beneath him until it passed. It left euphoria behind, painfully sharp, painfully sweet.

'How-- how long do we have?' he managed to ask.

'Forty minutes, maybe,' Maxwell said, sounding far away now. Zechs forced his eyes open. Maxwell sat forward to take the bag away from him, and was licking his finger. Powder. He'd taken something, too. But where Zechs felt alive for the first time in a week, Maxwell went relaxed and sleepy, sitting limp against the tree, his face slack with it, the bag forgotten in his hand. Zechs flexed his fingers, to catch the tingle that filled each of them. He closed the bag and tucked it away in Maxwell's pocket. He sat on the cold ground beside Maxwell, their knees pressed together, birdsong and wind rushing in his ears. Tablets wouldn't last long, he knew, and knew as well that he was only feeling it so strongly because he'd been detoxifying for a week beforehand, but it felt so good in that moment. It felt so good, and it had been a long time since he'd felt good.

He traced a white scar on Maxwell's hand, following the broken curve of the lifeline on his palm. He said, 'Are you all right.'

Maxwell swallowed. With an effort, he turned his head, but his eyes didn't open. He mumbled, 'They'll look for us. Would've... would've had longer if Purceli... hadn't been on our asses.'

There was another white scar, only barely visible, but long, on Maxwell's jaw, smooth against his fingertip. No hair at all, as if he were a boy of twelve, not nearly twenty. Zechs slid his own palm against it, against the cool silk of Maxwell's hair. Maxwell turned his head away. He stretched flat on the dirt between the roots, settling his arm over his eyes to shade them. Zechs lay down beside him, staring up at the bare winter canopy above. The slow rocking movement of the brown branches mesmerised him, but so, too, did the smell of Maxwell's shampoo, so near him, and the warmth of his body, and when he shifted his arm just an inch to the right, his hand touched Maxwell's, wrist touching wrist, hand touching hand. Zechs swallowed, and fire flowed through him from chest to groin. He rolled, and lowered himself over Maxwell, covering him.

'We’ll have to hurry,' he said.

This close, he could see the translucence of Maxwell's skin, the blue veins of his eyelids, the fine shade of red in his eyebrows and the long strands of hair that brushed away with Zechs' touch from his forehead. He never said yes. But he never said no, either.

Zechs lifted the hem of Maxwell's shirt and pressed his lips to Maxwell's warm belly, dragging his tongue over skin, mapping ribs, navel, the thin trail of dark hair that led to the hem of his jeans. He shifted away to pull at the button and zip, left an accidental scratch in Maxwell's pale skin as he dragged at the jeans and the shorts beneath them. Not a hairless boy here, and that was enough to harden him, just the sight of it, the scent of another man. He'd been too long without it, with Noin standing guard at his door, hangdog guard always warning away every possible opportunity with her mournful staring. But she wasn't here now to ruin this. He rubbed Maxwell with his hand, dragged his fingers through the crinkly hair of Maxwell's crotch, mouthed him until it rose against his lips. He fumbled at his own zip and grabbed Maxwell's hand, cramming it against him. Not enough. Not enough, but they had nothing with them outdoors like this.

He might have disdained it in better days, but it wasn't better days, not any more, and he knew what he needed. Knew they might not have another opportunity away from prying eyes. He spat into his hand, three, then four times, enough to slick himself. Maxwell was supine when Zechs rolled him, took Zechs' arm about his middle and the intrusion of a finger with nothing but a breath of air. When Zechs climbed over him from behind and pushed into him, Maxwell fisted the dirt and clenched against him, suddenly and painfully resistant-- why? Surely he couldn't be surprised by it. But almost as quickly he was pliant again, and Zechs dropped his head to Maxwell's shoulder, to muffle his noise against Maxwell's shirt. He dug against the ground with his shoes, dug rivets to get the leverage for each thrust, but he didn't need many. Maxwell was a tight tunnel, and the starfield behind his eyes became freefall all too soon. He panted his release, and released Maxwell's arms surprised to discover that his hands had gone numb from the force of his grip.

He found himself on his back again some time after that, gazing up at the trees. He could see hints of the sky beyond them, bits of blue peeking through. One of the better things about Earth. There was nothing like that on Mars. No trees. Red storms, and sand. No blue, and he did like blue. There was freedom in blue. The wild space of sky and ocean, untamed and uncolonised by man.

A shiver wracked him. He was cold. He was cold because he was half bare. He felt about him for a patch of grass, and found enough to rip up a handful. He cleaned himself as best he could, and propped himself on an elbow to look after Maxwell. He lay where he'd been left, his shirt rumpled at his shoulders, his jeans at his ankles. There were bruises on his hips, already beginning to show. Zechs swallowed drily.

He wiped Maxwell down with the grass, and dressed him. As Zechs snapped the jeans button back into place, Maxwell rolled away from him, curling onto his side. If his eyes had opened once at all through any of it, it didn't show.

'You shouldn't sleep out here,' Zechs said, uncertain of him.

'They'll just think I had a psychotic break and reverted to my childhood,' Maxwell mumbled, rubbing a hand over his nose.

'They'll extend your stay to ninety days.'

That was evident motivation. Maxwell pulled himself up slowly, combing a finger through his long fringe, plucking dead leaves from his braid. He climbed to first one knee and then the next, brushing dirt from his clothes. He glanced around him from under lazy lashes, and wandered off without looking back at Zechs.

'Maxwell,' Zechs called.

'What.'

He tried to think, but if there were words for what they'd just done, he didn't know them. He closed his own eyes. The happy delirium of the codeine was already fading, gone.

'Nothing,' he said.

'Exactly,' Maxwell answered, and trudged away, disappearing between the trees.


	4. Zechs - Two

'When did you have your first drink?' Purceli asked Maxwell.

Maxwell dropped his head back to the green cushion behind him. 'I don't know. Always ago. Drinking was never a thing. Everyone drank. There's no clean water on L2. You drink alcohol because the alcohol is cleaner than the showers.'

'All right.' Purceli let that pass without taking offence; he was used to their ways and rarely rose to provocation, even when it was just Maxwell venting his temper in snippy little rejoinders. 'So,' the director asked instead, 'when did drinking become a thing for you?'

Zechs bit back a sneer. He was tired, to the bone. Their new schedule demanded a seemingly endless amount of thinking and talking and thinking about what to talk about. Between their sessions with Purceli and their enforced time in group therapy, it seemed to Zechs that he was being swallowed by words, drowned by them. He was a silent person by nature and it was an effective torture.

Relieved only slightly by the new form of recreation he'd discovered. He didn't think he liked Maxwell very much, on the whole-- and he was in no doubt whatsoever that Maxwell did not like him-- but the only peace he felt was the few minutes after they slept together. And he could, now, sleep. He'd slept four whole hours last night, in Maxwell's bed, before Maxwell had rolled over and kicked him out to beat the morning shift of nurses.

'You ever heard of a cronk,' Maxwell said finally, his voice muffled around his fingernail. There was a thin line of blood there, before he licked it away. 'Cronks and moonies.'

'No.' Purceli made a note with his pen, a quick dash. 'What's a cronk?'

'That's what they used to call colonials. Like, a century ago. Longer. Moon-men and shit. That's what they call me, my unit.'

'Other Preventers?'

'Yeah.'

'You don't like being called that.'

'I don't like old-fashioned racism dressed up as fake comradeship and phoney old-boy bullshit.' Maxwell clenched his hands into fists. 'They act like we have different DNA. Maybe we do. Maybe they're hoping they have an opportunity to spill some blood and find out.'

Zechs stirred. 'That's not fair,' he said. 'You don't know that.'

'Neither do you. You're like that, too.'

'I'm hardly!'

'Boys,' Purceli said mildly, and Zechs turned away, gritting his teeth. 'Duo,' Purceli added then, 'have you ever reported harassment?'

'To who?' Maxwell stuck his thumbnail back in his mouth, worrying at it with his sharp teeth. 'Biggest Ozzie of all runs the damn Corps. What's she going to tell me? I knew what I was getting into. It'll pass when they get to know me, trust me. They're just acting out because they're scared of change. I know the rules. I gave my word I could handle it.'

'You didn't give your word not to negotiate changes where changes can make improvements that help everyone.' Purceli might have been waiting for an answer, there, but he didn't get one. 'Have you ever talked to anyone?' he asked. 'A friend, I mean?'

Maxwell snorted. 'I'm not really in a position to make a lot of casual friends. Who do I know, anyway?'

'Who do you know, really? Who would you trust with your life? With your back?'

That seemed to catch Maxwell off his guard. 'In Preventers? No-one. They said they were going to bring in Chang, but that hasn't happened yet.'

'Not in Preventers, no. In the Resistance, perhaps. Or from before that.' Purceli leant in, balancing his elbows on his knees. 'Members of your old cell. People you wouldn't hesitate to share something this important with, people who would know you, and care that you're here. Is there anyone?'

Zechs already knew the answer to that. Of course he did. The Gundam Pilots. It would have to be. OZ had always believed they came as a unit, even with the reports of in-fighting, and Libra had proved it to him. They'd fought as one. They'd traipsed off into the peace as one. Who knew. Maybe as two. Maybe that was why Maxwell was hesitating. He couldn't claim that was classified.

'Quatre,' Maxwell said slowly, mumbling it around his hand. 'He would care. He cares about everything, that's always the joke. He'd care about the lack of air in Space if anyone pointed it out to him... It'd be good to see him, you know. Talk to him about things. But--'

'But?' Purceli prodded.

'But—' Maxwell bit his lip until it whitened. 'But if anyone's gonna make good it's him, right? He's got family and a career and a big place to take care of. I show up, I drag him down with my shit.'

'You don't think he'd want to be a part of your shit with you?'

'You shouldn't swear,' Maxwell said. 'You don't really put enough emphasis on it. Whenever you say shit you're really supposed to be thinking fuck. When you say fuck, you're really supposed to be thinking fuck you, you motherfucking piece of--' He swallowed, and stopped himself. 'I told Quat that once. I got him up to “fart monster”. He's really great. He'd care. I just-- I just don't want him to-- I don't want him to know. I don't want to him know, okay.'

'You want him to look up to you.'

'Yes,' Maxwell agreed grudgingly.

'What about someone you look up to? Is there someone out there you could talk to?'

Maxwell gnawed at his thumb. 'Heero's in the colonies. I'm not sure which one, but he leaves clues. I haven't ever figured out if he does it because he wants me to find him or if he's just sloppy and figures he can handle whatever comes out of the woodwork.' A ghost of a smile touched his lips, but faded before it quite reached his eyes. 'I don't think he'd really get it. I don't know. Sometimes he looks at me like I'm a moon-man, too. Maybe Chang would be better, if he's supposed to be joining Preventers, but he'd judge, you know. He'd make it out like I'm the weak one for not handling it better, and he's right, isn't he, so what's the use in that? Barton...'

'Which one is Barton?'

'Trowa Barton.' Maxwell smeared the blood from his finger across his palm, staring down at it. 'I think he'd get it. Wanting to be someone else, somewhere else. Barton's not really his name-- he took it from a dead man. And he's really the one who should be joining Preventers, not Chang. It's not about honour and catching bad guys and putting out the flames of evil, not anymore. It's about following the bribes and the drugs and the mobile suits and the bodies. Barton knows about that. And how it gets to you. He used to hide out at a circus. I always thought that was really funny, you know? It's all a circus out there. Why not make it a circus at home, too. At least the only thing gonna kill you there is the hot dogs.'

Purceli smiled obediently. 'Why don't you call him?' he suggested. 'We have a visitor day coming up. Barton could be your guest.'

No. Zechs knew the answer to that one, too.

'No way.' Maxwell clammed right back up. His knees came up tight to his chest, and he crammed his thumbnail back between his teeth.

'Why not?'

'If one of them knows, they all know.'

'You don't think he'd keep a secret for you? Or that if he did tell, they wouldn't just be concerned for your health? Want to help you?'

'What the hell help is there?' Maxwell demanded. 'I'm here. Fat fucking lot of good that's doing me.' He shoved to his feet. 'We're out of time. I have to meet the group for AA.'

Purceli winced as his door slammed against the wall with Maxwell's passing. He sighed.

Zechs rose more slowly. He didn't say anything as he left. But he heard Purceli sigh again as he closed the door behind him.

 

**

 

He passed his three-week mark at the Centre with little fanfare but for bad weather. It rained for a solid two days, keeping him from making his escape to the woods outdoors. Morose, Zechs loitered as much as possible in the cafeteria, to be near the windows, but staring at the rain only made it worse. He drank so much tea he felt as soggy inside as it looked outside, and finally gave up in disgust. Wandering the halls made him feel like a lunatic, but it was a least motion, exercise, movement.

He was dreaming constantly. Even when he dozed he dreamed, and it was all wild, a jumble of memory and nightmare. Treize figured prominently, and Noin, and even Relena, whom he had tried diligently to forget. Sometimes she was the tiny baby he'd held in his arms, with his parents smiling proudly down, and sometimes she was the brave young woman who'd confronted him, not yet knowing she was his sister, the survivor of a purged and murdered line. He'd seen her only twice since the war-- once before leaving for Mars, feeling he'd owed her the good-bye and glad to be leaving her behind, glad to be leaving her if it meant she'd live out the rest of her life, their Peacecraft life, the way it was meant to be. Once after coming back, and then only by chance, a meeting that had lasted for an awkward minute, a press of hands, her lips warm on his cheek, leaving a promise to talk more. He'd slipped away, glad, then, to be able to leave without fulfilling that promise. They weren't really siblings anymore. They didn't know each other, they had no bond. They owed nothing. It would be easier to forget.

It would have been easier to forget a great many things. That was less and less possible here, where he was asked to dredge it up for public consumption at every turn. Maxwell was better at that, playing along until pushed to some mysterious edge. Some days they went well beyond what Zechs would have thought were his boundaries. Other days his fuse was short, and it took hardly anything to set him off. His reactions could be startling and violent, those days. Once he overturned a lamp, breaking the ceramic base and cutting himself on the shards; he'd been suspended from public activity for that, and Zechs hadn't been able to find him until after lights out, when he'd been summarily dismissed from Maxwell's door.

But when he talked he could talk with surprising candour. After the years of secrecy in OZ, the secrets Zechs had kept for himself, and the secrets he'd kept for Operation Daybreak, that kind of radical honesty had never been Zechs' way. Yet he remembered how Heero Yuy had spoken with almost confrontational openness to him, how confounded it had made him feel after those many years of deliberate obscurity. Maybe it was nothing more than the difference between colonist and Earther, or Rebel and Ozzie, differences he felt more keenly than ever in those sessions on Purceli's couch. But it made him think in ways he'd never thought before.

'Zechs,' Purceli said, 'you haven't shared much today.'

Zechs pressed his thumbs to the spot of sore pain between his eyes. He'd had a headache for days that refused to be chased away, even with the pills in Maxwell's magic bag. 'No,' he said briefly.

Purceli politely pressed him. 'I think you ought to try. You haven't been very talkative in group, either, and we've been clear that you need to contribute. So let's try together. Duo's talked about his drinking. Let's talk about why you started using codeine.'

Maxwell's head turned toward him, though Zechs stayed stiffly facing the window. 'I'd prefer not to,' he said.

'We can do question and answers, if that would help.' Purceli folded his notepad over to a fresh page. 'It was an injury, yes? The initiating incident.'

Even if he'd wanted to he didn't have words. His mind was blank. 'Initiating incident.'

'An accident?' Purceli prodded. 'Or something that happened during the war?'

Zechs swallowed drily. 'A war-- injury. Yes.'

Purceli waited, then led him into it. 'When?'

When he hesitated, Maxwell blew out an annoyed breath. 'Libra,' Maxwell said.

They both looked. Maxwell hugged one of the green deflated pillows to his chest, picking at the loose stitching.

'Obviously,' Maxwell added. 'That was the last major MS engagement you were involved in. You have scars all over your chest. Old scars, but not that old. Libra, right.'

Purceli pursed his lips. 'It was the Battle of Libra?' he clarified. He made a note in his pad, as Zechs set his teeth together. 'That was years ago now.'

'Three.' Three years and eight months. Christmas was near. He wanted to be gone by Christmas, back to the Red Planet where no-one marked that holiday but for the small details like tinsel and fairy lights, not lives lost and treaties written and history redrawn.

'And you received injuries during the Battle?'

'My suit was crushed,' he explained reluctantly. Almost the exact same injury that Treize had suffered, years earlier, in Space not far from where Zechs had waged the last engagement of the Colony War. Treize had been trapped in a crushed suit and had been rescued by crewmen. Zechs had clawed his way out, though it had taken hours, hours of panic and-- Treize had called it the certainty of death. Acceptance. Zechs had never understood that, until he'd experienced it for himself. He'd never really believed he could die, would die, even in moments when he'd arguably been closer to death. But trapped in Epyon he'd really believed he'd die there. He still woke to the suffocating pressure of Gundamium crushing him against his pilot's chair, ripping muscle and skin as he pried himself free. He'd pulled an arm from its socket, punctured a lung, broken ribs. If he hadn't been found by loyalists he wouldn't have survived the internal bleeding. As it was, he'd barely survived the loyalists, who'd wanted him to lead them in a new resurrection of White Fang.

'The codeine was to manage the pain,' Purceli said. 'Did it help?'

'It was better than the alternative.' Zechs folded his hands around his knee, gripping tightly. 'I had skin grafts and multiple surgeries. I spent months underground in sub-par medical facilities, and half a year after that working with friends in White Fang to stomp out radical activists trying to seize remaining mobile dolls to advance their little causes. Then I took an active post with Preventers. Codeine takes the edge off the pain. I wouldn't call it “managing”. I'd call it getting through the day.'

'Understandable,' Purceli nodded. He wrote notes, his pen flowing from one side of the page to the other and starting over again. He glanced up, and kept writing. 'You've been here for three weeks?'

'According to the cupcake they gave me in the cafeteria,' he answered coolly.

Purceli smiled. 'I like those. Angela makes the carrot cake from scratch. Good thick icing.'

'Your point?'

Purceli rested his pen. 'My point is that you haven't had any pain medication for three weeks. You haven't asked for anything, either. You haven't limped, or acted sore, or in any way evidenced pain.' He tapped his fingers on the pad. 'I don't think that's a revelation. I think you realised that a while ago.'

'Your point,' he repeated. His knuckles were white, and he tried to flex his fingers. He couldn't. They were numb from the force of his grip.

'You have nothing but time here, Zechs. It's worth thinking about your root cause. Until you confront it, it's going to weigh on you.'

He only just stopped himself from rolling his eyes. Purceli noted it, he was sure, watching him like a hawk. Like an Academy instructor of old, alert for every failure, demerits just waiting to be logged. 'I don't believe in root causes,' Zechs said flatly. 'There's no one reason. For anything. Anyone who reduces men and history to a single impulse misapprehends the complexity of the human experience.'

Maxwell snorted softly. 'God,' he muttered, and stuck a fingernail in his mouth. 'I hate agreeing with you.'

Purceli chuckled. 'All right,' he said. 'So explain the complexities to me. We have time. Nothing but time.'

Time. It yawned before him. He stared longingly out the window at the rain. 'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'Meissner?' Purceli proposed. 'You seem to do better at this when you have something to debate. There's a psychoanalytic theory of addictive personalities. These days it's a dead issue; no-one in the psychoanalytic community believes Meissner's reduction. These days we consider drug abuse to be both a defensive behaviour and an adaptive one. The theory is that you adopted your addiction to codeine in direct response to a problem of overwhelming anxiety about something else, something you couldn't solve through other means.'

Zechs struggled not to frown. 'I don't consider my personality to have anything to do with my-- problem.'

'No? For the sake of argument, let's consider it. Did this really start three years ago, just because of the pain you were in after your injuries at Libra? Or was Libra itself a sign of something?'

Maxwell shoved the pillow at him abruptly. 'Libra was sure as hell a sign of something,' he said, and left the couch. He went to the electric kettle and turned it on. It began to rumble immediately.

Zechs pushed the pillow away. 'Libra happened because I couldn't support the direction of OZ once Romafeller became involved. They dangled Treize by the purse strings. He changed. His pretty words about revolution and change evaporated.'

'What would you know about it?' Maxwell countered. 'You spent half your time trying to track Heero down and make him duel you. Trowa told me. You dragged them and their Gundams to the Arctic to hide them from Romafeller. If Relena hadn't shown up you'd still be there beating the crap out of each other.'

'Why were you so focussed on Heero Yuy?' Purceli asked.

Zechs rubbed his head again. His headache refused to fade. 'I wasn't. He was an obstacle and I-- wanted to understand him. Wanted to know what we were facing in the Gundam Pilots.'

'You had two of us,' Maxwell pointed out. 'Three. You captured me. And your pet Ozzies just tortured me for some crap intell and then they were going to execute me on prime time television. If you really wanted to _understand_ us you could have spent that time talking to someone who doesn't answer in grunts like Heero.' He showed Zechs the long scar on his hand. 'Instead I walk away with this shit and you walk away with a stiffie for White Fang. How'd you overlook the fact that they were obviously anarchists? Treize missed a little polish with you. At least Une developed a personality that knew how to negotiate.'

The kettle began to steam and whistle. Zechs dug his fingers into the aching muscles of his neck. 'I don't feel like talking,' he began.

'You never do,' Maxwell muttered. 'You have a theory for people who go non-verbal when anyone asks them a direct question, Doc?'

Purceli gazed thoughtfully at them. 'Duo,' he said, 'does Zechs know where you grew up?'

'Me?' Maxwell stopped in the act of picking up the kettle. It wouldn't stop whistling, and Zechs discovered he was grinding his teeth. 'L2. He knows that.'

'Where on L2.'

Maxwell inhaled, and held it. 'No.'

'I think you should tell him.'

'No,' Maxwell said again, a hard edge to his voice. He grabbed the kettle and poured a mug of hot water for himself, but his hand was shaking. He spilled, and cursed. He brushed the water sloppily onto the carpet, wiping his hand on his jeans. He clenched his fingers around the burn. Purceli rose to help him, grabbing a clean flannel from his desk and wrapping Maxwell's hand. Zechs watched, confused by the way Maxwell had reacted to a simple question. But the answer wasn't hard to deduce. It wasn't a simple question. There was something old and painful behind it, and-- no. Not hard to deduce at all. Maxwell's root cause, on display. Maxwell was pale in the face and red in the eyes, angry and embarrassed and ashamed.

Zechs swallowed, and said, 'I witnessed their murder.'

Purceli looked up. Maxwell looked up, and wet his lower lip, biting it.

Purceli resumed his seat, touched his notepad. He didn't write. He said, 'Who?'

'My-- parents.' Zechs dropped his eyes with difficulty. Maxwell had become a soft-edged blur, and he had to make himself blink, though his eyes felt strange and salty. 'There were soldiers,' he said, forcing it out hoarsely. He'd never said it aloud, not to Relena, who had asked and who could never hear the truth, not to Treize, who had probably guessed long before Zechs had confessed his identity. He didn't say it to Purceli, who didn't matter and wouldn't ever matter to him. He said it to Maxwell, who knew. Maxwell stood so still it was as if he stood in Sanq Palace with Zechs, watching it happen. 'We were hiding in the kitchens. Trying to get out through the back halls. They found us there. They were flooding the Palace, and we couldn't get out. Father put my sister and me in a cabinet, one of the locked pantries, and then they were inside. There was shouting, and I didn't understand it. I don't remember it now, only that it seemed to last forever and no time at all. They made them kneel, my mother and father both, and they shot them in the head. One of the soldiers took pictures, and another took their rings and signets. They were laughing and joking. They opened bottles of wine and drank them there, over my parents' bodies.'

Maxwell dropped his flannel into the garbage pail. 'You want a medal?' he asked rudely. 'Sympathy?' But he breathed out, a soft sigh. 'I'm sorry,' he said then. 'It must have been hard.'

Zechs swallowed against the acid taste in his mouth. 'I said I didn't want to talk. I don't want to talk.'

'I said I was sorry. You should talk about it. I won't--' Maxwell ventured back to the couch, though he didn't sit. He held out the tea mug. Zechs turned his face away from it, and a moment later it lowered.

Purceli said nothing to interrupt them. So, Zechs thought dimly, the plan was afoot. Getting them to fight for each other, or against each other, if it made progress. He wasn't sure it felt much like progress. His head was killing him. The nurses begrudged even an aspirin and he didn't want the bother of signing out for it, but he might have to. He wouldn't have the chance to try to sleep it off until after dinner. His stomach was unhappy, too, turning on itself and bottoming out. He felt faint, even.

'I never knew anyone who knew their parents,' Maxwell said softly. 'At least you had that.'

'I was privileged in a lot of ways by your standards,' Zechs replied stiffly. 'Maybe it's different when you have farther to fall. Maybe it's not.'

'Think they're proud of you?'

'They'd be appalled.'

'I think so too. About mine. My--' Zechs glanced up from the corner of his eyes. Maxwell turned the mug in his hands, about and about. 'They'd hate that I'm here. What I did to be here. And that I'm fucking up my chances here.'

'It's a memory,' Zechs said, and took the tea away from him. Maxwell's hand was raw and red from the burn. It would need ointment. 'Memory is just a choice. Choices are just control. Or thinking we can gain control. Maybe that's an illusion, and we're helpless. Wouldn't that be an irony. Our Gundams, our battles, our superweapons. All an attempt to gain some hallucinatory vision of control over our own lives, and at what expense.'

'Don't,' Maxwell said.

'What?'

'Be like that.'

He looked out at the rain. It was getting worse again. He couldn't even see the grounds outside, or the woods beyond. 'It was horrible. But then I'm sure you endured as much or worse.'

Maxwell didn't answer immediately. 'It's not a competition,' he said finally, dubiously. Not even he believed it. Zechs laughed rustily.

'Ancient history,' he said.

'Yeah,' Maxwell agreed. 'At least, what... a year or two ago.'

'The days feel like centuries here.'

'Yeah.' When Zechs looked, he found Maxwell staring out his window, too, his face long and drawn. 'Yeah,' Maxwell said. 'I know exactly what you mean.'

Purceli cleared his throat. 'I don't want to keep you past lunch,' he interrupted gently. 'Take a break. And then let's meet back here afterward. See you in an hour fifteen.' He rose to open the door. Maxwell came to life slowly, looking about as if just remembering where he stood. He nodded awkwardly to Zechs, and left without waiting for him. Zechs was slower gathering himself, reaching for his jacket, shrugging into it, finding a place on the many books and magazines on the table to place his tea. When he neared the door, though, Purceli stopped him. 'A moment, please,' the director bade him.

'Yes?' Zechs watched warily as Purceli closed the door again. 'Private sessions in addition to the rest of this?'

'Only a moment of your time.' Purceli leaned on the wall, while Zechs crossed his arms and waited impatiently. He said, 'Duo's seen your chest?'

Zechs blinked, caught off his guard. 'My chest?'

'We discourage patients from becoming sexually involved. It's one of the conditions you agreed to; you signed the paperwork.'

Zechs dragged in a long breath. 'You are-- misapprehending the-- situation. Maxwell and I-- sparred. In the past. He's a Gundam Pilot. As you're surely aware. You're the one who put us together because of our, quote, similar experiences.'

'Consider this a friendly reminder of the rules,' Purceli said. 'And a reminder that if the staff here do have any reason to suspect inappropriate contact between attendees, we'd be obliged to take steps to stop it.' He reached for the latch and opened the door. 'You did good work just now, Zechs, the two of you. I do think you can help each other. But only if you're careful about it, and mindful of what you're getting into. You need a friend who can support you. That should be where it stops.'

Zechs felt something rather like hate for the mild smile Purceli turned on him then. He clenched his hands, digging his fingers into his palms. Not the smile. Purceli only dared it because Zechs was powerless-- and that was what he hated, not the little man who exercised his small authority over Zechs because of it. This place, this bargain he'd made with Une, felt less and less worth the effort. Twenty-four days to go.

'Thank you,' he said hollowly, and left.

 

**

Maxwell sucked on him, his mouth hard and hot and wet all at once. His hair was soft in Zechs' hands, twining loose and cool around his fingers, catching against the zip of his trousers. Maxwell cursed, buried against his hips, and they fumbled awkwardly until they freed it, panting in the dark.

'More,' Zechs pleaded, the most he could articulate. 'Please.'

Maxwell wrapped a fist around him and pumped it. 'We should have waited,' he whispered. 'People are in and out of here during supper.'

'We won't get caught if you finish.'

'If you finish,' Maxwell grumbled, and swallowed him down again, his tongue making aimless circles around Zechs' girth, his lips closing tight on just the head. Zechs tried to urge him down, pressing on his head with both palms, and Maxwell shoved him away with no uncertain aim. With an effort, Zechs confined his hands to the wall, instead, gripping the toilet paper dispenser to the one side and the handicap bar to the other. The bob of Maxwell's head in his lap was mesmerising. Fingertips rolled his balls, and he bit down a groan that would have given them away for sure. Their choice of the single toilet on the lower floor away from the dining hall would give them some guarantee of privacy, but only if they did nothing to draw suspicion to a door that had no lock.

His legs shifted restlessly, toes tingling. 'I'm close,' he managed.

Maxwell brushed his braid back over his shoulder. He pushed Zechs back by the shoulder, to make him lean away, hips tilting up. Zechs obeyed, catching at Maxwell's hand. He pressed his own open lips to the scar on Maxwell's palm, let his tongue touch the indented edge of it. Maxwell shivered, looking up at him. He brushed a path down Zechs' belly, and cupped him close again. This time, when he put his mouth on Zechs, it was softer, gentler. His fingers caressed Zechs' bare thigh up to the crease at his hip. Zechs flushed hotly, opened his mouth to warn him, and never did. He came, strangling his outcry by pressing Maxwell's palm to his mouth.

Maxwell moved first, afterward, climbing to his feet from the tile, knees cracking in the silence. The bulge in his jeans drew Zechs' languid gaze, and he tugged at the hand he still held. Maxwell shuffled near when he pulled. He massaged Maxwell through his denims, rubbing him slowly, enjoying the feel of warm flesh, human nearness. Maxwell stood over him, straddling his knee, twisting a button on Zechs' shirt and gazing at him with an odd expression.

'What?' he croaked, and cleared his throat. 'What is it?'

'Thinking about what happens when we leave here,' Maxwell said. 'When I leave first. If I'll pretend I don't know you. If you'll pretend.'

'Do you want me to?' he asked. He lowered Maxwell's zip, wormed his fingers inside. 'Outside... outside it could be different.'

'What, like, we'll magically like each other?' Maxwell checked his watch. 'If we're going to eat we should go.'

He released Maxwell regretfully, but understanding that was a dismissal. He wiped oily pre-come from his fingers on a strip of toilet paper, and used more to pat dry his groin. 'If you don't prefer me, you should say so.'

'I don't have any problem saying anything.' Maxwell zipped himself, fluffing his shirt out over his erection. 'Like... sorry.'

'About earlier? You already told me. Purceli is the one who should be sorry. He's playing with us, and it's bound to be ugly.'

'That's his job.' Maxwell stepped away, to the mirror to check his hair. He glanced back at Zechs. 'I'm, um, thinking that I'm going to stop picking up those pills.'

Zechs stopped in the act of dressing himself. 'Why?'

'He kind of had a point. Purceli. He gave me a book to read.' Maxwell leant on the sink, not quite looking Zechs in the eye. 'This guy, Dodes. He says a lot of shit about how addiction is about, um, control. Not feeling helpless because you get to make the decision, even if it's a bad one. It kind of jives.'

'And if this were some grand eye-opener for you, I'd believe your sudden turn-about.' Zechs stood, buttoning his shirt. 'But you already knew this. You already told me-- it's about getting through the day. Why give up what works?'

'I shouldn't have brought you into it.' Maxwell looked at the floor, then abruptly met his eyes. 'That was wrong. You had detoxed. I should have left you out of things. What you said today, you could, you know, you could get through--'

'What?' Zechs pinned him to the sink by putting an arm over him, using his superior height to trap him there. Maxwell glared, but he didn't try to escape. 'What makes you think I don't treasure control as much as you? That I didn't make the exact same choices? And that I'm not fully cognisant of the choices I'm making now?'

'Denial is a choice,' Maxwell said. 'A bad one.'

'But still mine. And you will take that choice away from me with your good intentions.' He pressed his thigh between Maxwell's legs, but didn't like how it felt, so overtly manipulative. He sighed, and adjusted Maxwell's collar instead, to lay it flat. He stroked a tangle of hair flat against Maxwell's smooth cheek. 'I didn't say a single thing today for myself. I said it for you. I don't know if I could even tell you why, except that you seemed to need it. Maybe you need someone to fight for.'

'Maybe you do.' Maxwell brushed his hair over his ear impatiently. 'I don't need rescuing. I'm not offering you a deal.'

'Then why not just remind me that I owe you, and make this your demand?'

Maxwell bit in his lower lip, holding it in until it emerged white from the pressure. 'Don't make me do that,' he said quietly.

'Then do what you want. I can't stop you.' He stepped away, and finished buttoning his shirt. He took his jacket from the peg and shrugged into it. 'You smell like sex,' he said. 'We should be more careful. Purceli suspects.'

'How?' Maxwell frowned, and faced the sink to run the faucet. He splashed his face and washed with soap. 'He didn't say anything.'

'He did, to me.'

'Why?' Maxwell caught his eyes in the mirror. 'Why just to you?'

'Because I'm older?' Zechs caught the wet towel that Maxwell tossed him and scrubbed down his hands and neck. 'Because I'm more responsible. Because, of the two of us, I know it's wrong.'

Maxwell made a face at the water. 'Whatever.' He dried himself and flipped off the spigot. 'Give it a couple of days, then. If we don't act weird, they won't report weird.'

'You have no idea what's good for you, do you.' He had no idea what was good for himself, either. He reached without stopping himself. Maxwell's plait was smooth, the braid tightly woven. He traced it with the pad of his finger, wrapped his fingers over the elastic at the tip.

Maxwell turned, and opened the door. 'I'm sorry about today,' he said, and left. Zechs flexed his hand, and left after him. They walked in opposite directions.

It made for a slow week, without access to either Maxwell or to Maxwell's pills. The days dragged, and he felt as useless as he had in his first week with the methadone. He constructed a truly sad birdhouse in Crafts, and tripped over his own feet in Yoga, twisting his ankle and sidelining himself into the clinic. Maxwell ignored him more than usual in the group sessions, refusing him even direct eye contact-- not that Zechs ever got much of that from him. That was strangely difficult. He _wanted_ Maxwell to look at him. He wanted Maxwell to want to look at him.

They had writing assignments that week, letters to people in their lives they'd hurt in the course of their addiction. They were given extra time to write the letters, and free reign of the grounds to find a private space. Zechs went to their spot in the woods, hoping Maxwell would go there too. But Maxwell had either suspected he would try that or perhaps had just never thought that spot was special at all, because he never showed.

After all the rain they'd had the woods were wet still, the dirt damp, the leaves shivery with droplets that splattered Zechs whenever he bumped them. He used his jacket as a blanket, propped his dirty boots on a root, and propped his pad of paper on his knee. Letters. He'd never written a letter in his life. Maybe as a child-- half-remembered details of thank-you cards to aunts and uncles who had perished with the rest of his family in the fall of the Sanq Kingdom. He had probably only signed his name to a formula, the same few diplomatic phrases painstakingly printed by fountain pen. He'd been a proper prince, and princes did things the proper way.

But he'd ceased to be a prince when Miles Pargan had rescued him from that locked pantry and sent his sister in one direction and himself in another. Relena had been adopted by the Darlians and Milliardo, too old to forget his identity, had gone masked and vengeance-minded to a series of hide-aways, never secure enough rest easy. Treize. Treize had been his first friend, the first tentative trust he'd formed after years of looking over his shoulder, always half-way convinced he'd be found out, murdered in his sleep. Treize had guided him toward the military, where anonymity would protect him. Treize had been the guiding hand that brought him into the Specials, where he'd had the training to build his skills, the authority to do what he wanted with them, the lax supervision to hide his minor crimes. He hadn't written letters then, either. Memoranda, when he'd had to, when he'd absolutely had to report on his activities. Treize had done most of it for him. Really, Treize had done most everything for him, from the very beginning. All Zechs had ever been required to do stand prettily beside him, pilot to the best of his considerable ability. Follow loyally.

Until he hadn't. He still didn't know if he regretted how he'd left his oldest friend. Lover. Protector. Treize had been many things to him, things Zechs had repaid poorly-- things he had never been wholly grateful for, really, until Treize had been dead and it was no longer possible to express that he was-- grateful. He'd lived to adulthood in no small part because Treize had taught him how. But without Treize at his side, he'd felt lost in a sea of choices he didn't know how to make. White Fang. Preventers. Pills. Duo Maxwell. He didn't know.

He swallowed against a lump in his throat. He uncapped his pen, and wrote Treize's name in his best cursive. He took great care with the slant, angling it to the precise fifty-two degrees he'd been taught, drawing the capital T with its fish-hook tail, the sharp corners of the lower-case zed with its fine wide loop. He looked at the name on his page for a long minute, brushing away a drop of water that dripped on him from overhead.

_Treize_

He tested the pen against his thumb, and inhaled deeply. He set the pen to the page and drew a comma beside Treize's name. Treize, he wrote, I wish that you were here. I wish that we could talk. I didn't always feel clearer when we talked, but I felt calmer.

He dug the pen into his thumb.

He added, I miss you.

Well. That wasn't much about the harm he'd done, but Treize had been there for all of it, anyway. Treize had never had any patience for a re-hash of failure.

Noin. _Lu-cret-zi-a_. She was harder to think about. He knew he'd taken advantage of her. As teenagers, as adults, even now, letting her follow him back to Earth. Her wordless support had angered him, at times, because Treize at least had challenged him, demanded more of him when he had protested he had nothing else to give. But...

He wrote, You were my conscience when I had none left.

The effort of just those two letters wrung him dry. And he hadn't exactly fulfilled his assignment. Zechs dropped his head back to the tree trunk behind him.

What was Maxwell writing in his letters? Confessions to the other Gundam Pilots, probably. He'd said they didn't know about his drinking, but surely that was more to Maxwell's pathological aversion to revealing anything personal. What, after all, did Zechs know about him after weeks of the most personal contact imaginable? He knew that Maxwell shivered when Zechs touched him behind the knees, that when he yelled he went hoarse, perhaps the result of inhaling exhaust fumes from mobile suits. He knew that Maxwell had the pale skin of a man who hadn't seen natural sunlight in his formative years, that his small frame and light bones owed as much to malnutrition and neglect as they did to a Spacer's eligibility for a Gundam Pilot programme. And Zechs had his guesses about L2. Maxwell had been right about one thing. Zechs had been exposed to enough of the Pilots to understand something of their zeal. Everyone had their reasons for fighting. Treize had fought because he'd seen a universe in disarray and believed he was the man born to right it. Zechs had fought for his own agenda, until that agenda had been abruptly achieved, his vengeance satisfied. Then he'd fought to stop Treize in his agenda, or perhaps to facilitate it; he still wasn't truly sure. But he could guess why a boy from L2 would rather fight a kamikaze war, accept a suicide mission. And find himself bereft and purposeless when that war ended and a peaceful world needed detectives, not soldiers.

He put the nib of his pen to the paper, and wrote D U O.

They shouldn't have slept together. He could admit that. They shouldn't have done it high, and they shouldn't have done it sober. Not for the integrity of the Centre's programme, but for their own. It had been a vulnerable moment, series of moments, and they'd leapt into it for the worst reasons. It had been a kind of duel, a kind of mutually assured destruction. Like battling Heero Yuy in the Arctic. Debt. It was about who owed what, but not bean counting over petty obligations. There was an almost cosmic scale between them. A war, and decades of entrenched abuse between their peoples before that, and victimhood on a national level that had become inevitably personal. Sanq. L2. They were both failed states that would never be what two young boys had needed. It had caught them up in something greater and then left them behind, locked them out with needs that could never be answered. They'd tried to fill the hole with booze and pills. Now they'd try to fill it with each other.

He wrote, _When we leave this place, we shouldn't see each other. I'm sorry._ He ripped the page from the pad and folded it in thirds. He tucked it into his pocket.

 

**

 

As it happened, he never had a chance to deliver the letter.

The morning news was playing when he came down for breakfast. He paid it little attention; he'd passed the point of obsessively listening for word of the Outside. What he did notice was the covert glances of staff members as he walked his tray from the buffet to the tables. They were watching him. And they were whispering amongst themselves.

'Did something happen?' he asked Janey, setting his tray on the table. He never ate with the other patients, and she eyed him with surprise and even suspicion. As it was, Zechs hesitated to sit, but a nurse, passing by, saw him and frowned. Zechs sat.

Janey hugged her tea near. Away from him. 'You should eat somewhere else,' she mumbled.

'Your pardon?'

'Eat somewhere else, man,' Miguel repeated defencively. 'You heard her. We got enough to deal with.'

Zechs rose slowly. 'I didn't mean to offend anyone. I just wondered-- there seems to be something happening this morning.'

'Just the past catching up to you.' Miguel shoved his tray at him. 'Celebrity guests don't get any special breaks. Move on.'

His gut had that particular still feeling to it that meant instinct catching up with premonition. All this time he'd thought Une had put Maxwell here to watch him. But it hadn't been Maxwell. It had been the staff after all. That innocuous comment from the nurse the first day. Mr Merquise. He'd assumed they didn't know him. But Purceli had known he'd been at Libra, and hadn't asked which side he'd fought with.

They knew who he was.

He abandoned his breakfast and strode for the nurses' station. If he hadn't already felt the itch of the truth, he knew it by the way they scattered when he approached. Only the head nurse stood her ground, rising to greet him.

Zechs planted his palms flat on the window at the station. 'I want to know what's happened,' he told her.

'Why don't we stay calm, Mr Merquise,' she began.

'Do I appear to be anything other than calm?'

She swallowed. She was pressing a call button, not far enough out of his sight line to hide it from him. 'You should really be talking to the Director.'

'And no doubt he'll be here shortly. I want to know what's happened.'

She rubbed her hands nervously, then made her decision. 'Follow me,' she said shortly, and left the station. Zechs turned the corner impatiently, waiting for her to exit through the locked door and secure it again with her key code. She was headed for the nurses' rec room. Zechs followed quickly.

As with the duty station, the rec room emptied of occupants as soon as they saw him. He deliberately blocked the door, making them squeeze out around him; no-one met his eyes, and everyone was careful not to touch him. The head nurse turned toward the wall-mounted television, already playing the news. The news. He looked, as she took up the remote control and flipped through the channels, but his eye was caught by the papers open on the table. The nurses had been reading it. He pulled them near, his stomach already sinking. There were pictures. Long-lense, a little grainy with the newsprint ink, but very recognisable. He and Duo, walking the grounds together. The caption named the Centre.

He sucked in a breath. 'Who leaked it?' he asked.

'There's more,' she said.

More. Zechs wiped at sweat that broke out on his upper lip, from where he didn't know. Why. He blinked, and made himself look up at the television.

It was one of the entertainment shows. Light gossip, the sort of thing he'd never minded, the sort of thing he'd never had to pay any attention to, because someone else had always been watching it-- Treize, usually. Treize had always had an eye on who was sleeping with who and what implications it might have for their political, their military goals, and Treize had always had an eye for what was most effective in his campaigns, because Treize had always been playing the long game. Treize had collected his players so carefully, getting himself a Lighting Count who happened to be a secret Peacecraft, and he'd waited-- what, almost seven years after declaring silent war on the Alliance to assassinate the guardian of the other secret Peacecraft, bringing them both into play at the exact moment he needed them both. The Knight and the Queen. Treize must have been so amused by that...

He was drifting. He recalled himself with difficulty. The television.

_'Rumours have surfaced that Gundam Pilot Duo Maxwell and the former leader of separatist group White Fang, Milliardo Peacecraft, have been seen together at a northern California drugs and alcohol treatment facility. Obviously these are two notorious individuals, Gennifer, and at that these are names we haven't heard in a while. What do you make of the fact that they're turning up now and in such a fashion?'_

Zechs rubbed his head. His head ached. 'Turn it off.'

'There's more,' the nurse said. She changed the channel again.

Zechs straightened. They had an image on the screen, a voice narrating the contents. It was one of the letters he'd written, only four days ago. The letter he'd written to Treize, apologising for the past.

'How did they get that?' he demanded. He reached, and grabbed the woman's arm. 'How did they get that? That was in my private room!'

'Zechs.' It was Purceli, entering the rec room quietly, closing the door firmly. 'Is there a problem?'

'You're damn right there's a problem.' Zechs levelled a finger at the television. 'Which one of your people talked to the press? Which one of them searched my room and stole my personal property? Which--'

'I don't deny that this is a grave violation of your privacy here.' Purceli invited him to sit, and Zechs waved him off in agitation. Purceli grimaced over the newspaper, and folded it closed. 'I've already ordered my staff to look into this. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. We do not disclose patient information. I look on this as a terrible misdeed with real legal implications, and I give you my word that I will pursue this to the full extent of the law.'

'Am I to be mollified?' Zechs demanded. 'They have my-- they have my real identity. How does anyone here know anything about me beyond what I told you at the door? I should be no-one but Agent Merquise of Preventers to you.'

'You have a face that millions of people saw, Agent,' Purceli replied, almost politely enough that Zechs didn't attack him for daring it. The head nurse stood as near to the door as she could without fleeing through it, and she flinched when Zechs began to pace, furiously tearing up the floor with his strides. 'It's possible that someone here recognised you.'

'And used it,' Zechs spat. He shoved at a file cabinet in his path, then stopped abruptly. He whirled. 'Does Maxwell know?'

Purceli tugged at his tie. 'I don't believe so,' he answered. 'I-- haven't seen him yet this morning. As I believe we would have, if he did know.'

'I'll tell him.' Zechs grabbed the paper and tucked it under his arm. 'I want an injunction taken out against those television shows. They can't be legally disclosing your patient lists.'

'No,' Purceli agreed quietly. 'I've already contacted our lawyer. We'll do whatever we can to correct this, I promise you that.'

'You can't correct it,' Zechs pointed out flatly. 'All you can do is clean up after it. Move. I'm going to find Maxwell before he accidentally sees this.'

'Please tell him I'm here if he has questions. In fact-- maybe it would be a good idea if the three of us sat down together, this morning. I'll clear my schedule. Your schedule.'

Zechs only waved a distracted hand at him. He let himself out into the hall, thinking he should try the cafeteria first, in case Maxwell had just been late to breakfast, but Maxwell often chose not to eat. He checked the gym and the community room and even, dubiously, the chapel, before swinging back to Maxwell's room, but all were empty. He hesitated in Maxwell's room. Their possessions had obviously been raided by some enterprising employee, but he'd never noticed any disturbance. They had so little here to begin with, just clothes, really, a few books from home or borrowed out of the library. It had to have been a recent crime, if they had found Zechs' letters.

God. If they had found the letter he'd written to Treize, they had found the letter he'd written to Maxwell, the letter he'd never quite found the gumption to deliver. He'd left it in the top drawer of his bureau. He all but ran to his own room, throwing open the door. He yanked open the bureau drawers, feeling under, between all his shirts. It wasn't there. He checked all the other drawers to be sure. It was gone.

The last place he checked was the nature path outside. The relatively benign winter weather had turned grim at last, and it was an ugly storm, fit for his mood. Maxwell shouldn't have ventured out in it, but if he'd heard, it might have been the sort of thing he'd do, in a temper. Zechs wrapped himself in a coat and scarf, but that was inadequate protection. He was soaked through from frozen rain before he'd made it beyond the courtyard. He shivered and slogged through ankle-deep slush as he made his way into their woods. Some journalist had got close enough to get a picture of them doing this, he remembered warily, but shook it off. They had their story already and there wouldn't be anyone waiting out there in this. And if they had worse pictures... if they had worse pictures of things they'd done in those woods, it was too late to stop it from breaking.

The trees gave him some protection, but only a little. He wiped his face on wet wool, and left the path only when he found solid ground to walk on. There. The big oak that Duo preferred. He clambered over the roots, half-invisible with snow. 'Maxwell?' he called. 'Duo? Where are you? Duo--'

He'd guessed right, finally. Duo was there. Wearing just a shirt and denims. Zechs stripped out of his coat immediately and knelt to wrap Duo up in it, rubbing at his arms and back to warm him. 'You're a fool,' he said gruffly. 'You'll get hypothermia out here.'

'Don't care,' Duo mumbled. He shuddered once, all over. He was blue in the lips, far too pale. Zechs tucked his face into his own chest and pulled in his bare hands as well, chafing them briskly.

'You heard, obviously,' Zechs said finally. Yes. There beside his own paper, another, almost transparent from wet. He crumpled it with a swipe of his fist. 'It doesn't mean anything. Purceli already told me he's getting an injunction. They won't be able to print anything else.'

'They have our sessions.'

'What?'

'They have our sessions.' Duo's voice was hoarser than usual, but he put a shoulder to Zechs and wormed away. He reached for the paper and shoved it at Zechs. 'Everything we said. They got Purceli's notes and someone's claiming they have tape. _Everything we said_.'

He tried, but couldn't get it out right away. 'I-- what? How could-- how could they have that? We would have had to agree to be recorded. I know I never signed anything like that.'

'They lied!' Duo stumbled to his feet, clinging to the tree for balance. 'I should have known better. I told them things-- I told them things I've never--'

Yes. Things he'd never said to anyone else. Zechs brushed at his wet hair, but he hardly felt it. Numbness was setting in.

'Stupid,' Duo said viciously. 'God, I'm so stupid. This is what I deserve for thinking there was any god-damn point to any of this. I was falling for it! I'm such a fucking idiot.'

'Excuse me,' Zechs said dully, rising to his feet. He was frozen through, but he hardly felt it. The sound of Duo cursing at life and fate disappeared into the storm quickly enough, as he trudged back toward the Centre. How long it took him to return, he wasn't sure, but he was too cold even to shiver by the time he made it back. The heat of the cafeteria slammed him like a physical shock when he entered through the courtyard-facing doors, swaying him momentarily. He left puddles behind him, but there was no-one left to see. The patients and staff had moved on from breakfast, and it was empty.

He climbed the stairs again to his room. He'd done this barely half an hour ago, but it felt like a weary lifetime. He dragged his suitcase from beneath the bed and laid it open. He packed his clothes, his toiletries, his books, checked his wallet to be sure of its contents-- nothing there seemed to have been disturbed, though he hardly trusted it. He kept one card out on the duvet, leaving it ready for when he'd need it. He showered, suffering the pinpoint pains of iced nerves coming back to life under the hot water. He dressed himself in fresh trousers, a long jumper. It wasn't quite armour, but he felt stronger for it, protected. He tucked the card into his pocket, locked the suitcase, and carried it downstairs with him.

There was only one staffer on the front desk, at this time of the morning. Zechs set his case on the floor beside the desk, and told the young woman, 'I'm checking out.'

The lady blinked at him. 'I, uh... sir, I don't think you're due for another two weeks.'

'You're mistaken,' Zechs replied levelly. 'I'm checking out now. If there is paperwork, I'll fill it out. If you dither over it, I'll leave when my cab gets here.' He reached over the counter and picked up the phone reserved for residents. He used his card to dial the only number he cared to use now. A taxi company. 'Yes,' he said, meeting the staffer's eyes. 'A cab for one at 1002 North Madison. As soon as possible.'

She was on her own phone before he could finish. She turned away from him and whispered, but he ignored it. He knew who she was calling, and it wouldn't matter.

Their reaction time was admirably fast. Wherever Purceli had been, he came puffing at a run to the lobby only three minutes later. 'Zechs,' he called. 'Zechs, please. Please reconsider this.'

'I don't think so.' Zechs picked up his suitcase and headed for the front doors, where he could see the drive outside. 'I might have been persuaded on the point of thievery and press leaks, though I shouldn't have been. But secretly taping patient sessions is a step too reprehensible for my taste.'

'Taping—'

'You should read the entire article before you go rushing to your lawyer.' Zechs faced the director. 'And sweep your office. I'm willing-- just barely-- to believe you were unaware of this. But if someone's planted a recording device in your office, you have more than just a little legal trouble. I will be suing. And I'll encourage anyone else who was caught up in this to sue as well.'

Purceli was pale, but he held it together. 'You have that right, and in your shoes I'd do the same thing,' he said. 'I can't blame you for leaving. But please let me at least recommend a place with a-- more trustworthy reputation for you to complete treatment.'

Zechs set his jaws together, staring out the windows at the dark day outside. 'It isn't the reputation I'm concerned with. Maybe... maybe it's too much temptation for anyone. Milliardo Peacecraft has secrets a lot of people would like to see splashed across the headlines, and revenge is as decent a motive as any. How can I expect to find a place where some staff member wasn't touched by the war?'

'You need treatment, Zechs. You were doing well, but it's a long road yet, and what's happened to you today is going to make it harder. I'm ashamed to admit to that, but it will be true.' Purceli came a careful step closer. 'And if not for your sake, for Duo's. He respects you and he watches you. If you leave, I'm very much afraid he will, too.'

Zechs looked up. 'He doesn't know I'm going. I didn't tell him.'

'He'll find out. I don't have any means of stopping him.'

Zechs swallowed hard, and shook his head. 'You have it wrong, anyway. He doesn't respect me, even a little. He's made that very clear.'

'I think that perception comes more from your own self-loathing than from reality, Zechs.' Purceli saw it the same time Zechs did; the cab was arriving, just nudging up the long road from the highway. Purceli spoke urgently. 'It's been very clear to me these past few weeks in our sessions. He'll go where you go, and if you go down a dark road, he'll follow. Please consider what this means for both of you. I can give you names. If you're not ready today, then call me tomorrow, or the next day. Tell me where to call you. He wants to get better, Zechs, I think that he really does, but he's struggling right now and he doesn't think he deserves it. Help him.'

Zechs lifted his damp hair off his hot neck. 'I don't see that being here helped him,' he said. 'But... if he asks... if he seeks me out when he's finished here, I'll do what I can. But I don't think he will.'

Purceli pressed a card on him. The taxi company card, and his own card, with a personal phone number inked on the back. 'My home number,' he said. 'Call at any time. Even if it's just to sue. I'm sorry beyond what I can say.'

Zechs took it reluctantly. He inclined his head, and pushed out through the door.

The cab pulled around the circular drive, the wipers on the windscreen working furiously against the rain. Zechs jogged the short distance between the dripping overhang and the car, and slid into the backseat just a little battered by the wind and rain. Just a little dazed. It was over, and he was really leaving.

And Une would have nothing to say about how it had ended.

He swallowed. It seemed to be more difficult every time. 'Preventers,' he began, and his voice emerged on a rasp that was almost unintelligible. He cleared his throat. 'I'm sorry... downtown San Francisco. I just want a hotel in downtown San Francisco.'

'That's a long way,' the driver said, watching him in the rearview mirror. He twisted to look. 'You sure you want to go that far? Big fare.'

Zechs removed his wallet and passed forward a credit card. 'Just drive.'

The driver shrugged. 'Sure thing.' He swiped the card, and passed it back. 'You got any hotels in mind? I can recommend something.'

'Something... something with a waterfront view. I want to see the ocean and the sky.'

'Sure. Can do.' The driver put the car in gear and they crunched through gravel and slush. 'Some storm, huh?' he asked casually. 'We'll have to go a little slower in this kind of weather. Be a couple of hours, maybe. Maybe three.'

'That's fine.' Zechs wiped his face of rain, and shoved his suitcase away from him. 'Do you have radio? Anything without words.'

'Yeah. You look like a classical type of guy.' The driver found an opera and turned up the volume. 'You visiting someone at the Centre?'

There was a newspaper on the front seat. Foreign, Greek, perhaps, like the driver's accent. Maybe it hadn't had the story. Zechs tried to swallow, and couldn't. 'Visiting,' he echoed. 'Someone I used to know.'

The cab was slow on the dirt road out of the Centre, finding every pothole and dip, jolting him every time his body started to calm. He didn't allow himself to question, and he didn't, exactly, question what he'd done-- he'd had to get out of there, wasn't safe there, there was no question of that, but it had happened so quickly, and the cab had no damn air in it, was so hot, and he tugged at his collar, ripped it open as he began to sweat. He needed water, but didn't have any. He could make it a few hours, but he felt wrung out, as if he'd fought a battle through all hours of the night, not just a few strange, surreal minutes.

Something hit the car. 'Jesus!' the driver exclaimed. 'The hell?'

Zechs twisted to look. 'Stop,' he commanded. 'Stop a minute.'

'Some kind of animal?'

'Just stop!' He pushed open his door and stood out into the rain. 'Duo?'

He was there. From the woods, still in Zechs' coat, bedraggled and soaked. He'd run after them, and he was muddy from shoe to knee, his hands where he'd hit the car to get their attention. He stood wavering on the roadside, his breath steaming in the cold.

Zechs shook his head. 'You should go back,' he said.

Duo overrode him. He said, 'You owe me.'

'Duo.'

'You owe me,' Duo repeated. 'You owe me, Zechs. You owe me and all I'm asking for is a god-damn ride.'

He hesitated. It felt like eternity, but, really, he knew what his decision was. He felt relief in every centimetre of himself.

'Get in,' he said. 'You like a drowned rat in the middle of a jailbreak.'


	5. Zechs - Three

Duo slept the sleep of someone exhausted beyond his limits. Zechs did not, though he wished to; he stared at the popcorn ceiling of the hotel's strangely cornered room, mapped corners and shadows and wondered for long strange hours if the painting of the woman turning away was hung just slightly crooked. His mind was unsettled, his body too weary to do anything about it but suffer.

He pushed the sheet down, too hot. He pulled it up, too cold. He put his arm about Duo, who kicked, never so much as waking, and rolled away from him.

He looked vulnerable, in the moonlight, the digital glow of the clock on the bedside table. Asleep and naked it was easy to forget that Duo Maxwell was not just any nineteen year-old boy. Or Zechs chose to forget it, at any rate, to imagine silly things like what Duo would have looked like in a collegiate's uniform of slouchy denims and cocked baseball cap, a bag of books drooping from his shoulder. Zechs had at least some formal schooling by way of the military, but Duo would scoff at the notion, he was sure. There would be no field trips to museums, no dates in libraries. Duo had signed up to die for the Resistance, and hadn't. Everything after the fall of _Libra_ was an accident. An increasingly cruel twist of fate.

Zechs slid his hand over the hard bone of Duo's hip, the softer curve of his thigh. This touch Duo knew and did not resist. He hardened when Zechs touched him intimately, a little at least, flesh rising against Zechs' palm. Duo's thick lashes fluttered. Zechs pressed cold lips to Duo's shoulder, and Duo's exhale was like a sigh.

Zechs faced the window. He plumped his pillow and kicked a foot free of the counterpane and achieved a momentary satisfaction with his temperature. Somewhere past four, near enough to morning to watch the city beyond the curtains coming to life, he slept.

 

**

 

Duo tugged up his denims and snapped the button in place. 'I can take a cab.'

'Take the cab with me.' Zechs pushed his tangled hair back over his shoulder. 'We both have to check in. Though I don't see why it has to be today.'

'I don't see the point in waiting, that's why.' Duo had to hunt for his shirt, and found it in a crumple by the door. He shrugged into it indifferently. 'Lay around here if you want. She's going to know we left the Centre. You think she'll hesitate to declare us AWOL?'

'We're not her soldiers.' Zechs dropped onto his back. The filigree ceiling of the hotel room was indifferent, too, cold plaster staring back at him. 'The Centre wouldn't dare call her. Not after the way they fluffed the press leak.'

'Une watches the news, too.'

Zechs forced out a breath. 'As you like it.' He sat up again, swung his legs off the bed. The carpet was cool beneath his feet. 'We'll go in together.'

'If this is about being chincy with taxi fare--'

'Given that you ran away without your wallet, I'd like to see you pay for it otherwise.' He stood, bare, and strode to the chair where he'd left his luggage the night previous. Duo averted his eyes as he passed, and Zechs paused beside him, lifting his chin with a finger. 'It's not going to be normal. It's not going to be fine. You can't act like it will be, just because you want it badly enough.'

Duo knocked his hand away. 'Put some effing clothes on.'

He pulled a fresh shirt and trouser from his duffel. He tossed a jumper at Duo. 'You should have put that out for laundry last night. You're still covered in mud. You want Une to take you seriously, you can't show up looking like that.'

Duo's shoulders rose and fell in a reluctant sigh. 'Yeah.' He dragged the jumper on over his head, pushing the sleeves up where they fell long over his wrists. He scraped bedraggled hair out of his face. 'I'll pick up a spare uniform from the office. Then I'll head to my flat.'

'You have a place in the city?' Zechs dressed slowly, still thinking-- privately, anyway-- that he might be able to delay the inevitable if he tried. They should stop in the lobby for coffee, at the least, breakfast if they were smart. Une might not be able to technically fault them for leaving the Centre, not with their faces plastered all over television and the papers and their security so obviously at risk there, but she could push them to finish their time in other facilities. Well, himself. Duo had been nearly done with his sentence. If he was honest with himself, that was something to really fear, the idea that she would separate them. If he had to leave, he knew without asking that Duo wouldn't wait for him.

Whatever this was.

'I have a flat,' Duo repeated slowly, sarcastically. His face turned away, and he relented tiredly. 'I'd invite you, I guess, but I never really unpacked or anything. I don't have furniture. You're better off in the hotel.'

Zechs nodded uneasily. He buttoned the collar of his shirt, and shrugged into his coat. He folded his scarf and wrapped it about his neck. 'Maybe you should...'

'What?'

'Nothing.' He checked for his own wallet. 'Let's go, then, if you're determined about this.'

It had been weeks since he'd been to Preventers Headquarters. The building had not been especially familiar to him before he'd been shipped off to the Centre, since he'd only recently been recalled from Mars and there had been no formal units to require office space when he'd left for the Red Planet years earlier. It was a handsome space, inside and out. The lobby was tasteful and elegant, modern in its sleek lines and warm green marble. A central terrarium of olive trees-- a clever callback to Preventers' signature symbol of peace-- formed a small oasis of life amongst the cold stone. Zechs glanced back to the grey sky outside, and steeled himself with a deep breath.

They rode the lift to the sixth storey. Duo was silent now, grim; his thumbnail was firmly latched between his teeth, and when he licked away blood Zechs touched his arm to warn him.

'She's not here,' Columbia told them. Her secretary was busily packing records when they approached Une's corner office, and the young man spared them nothing more than a glance before he went back to his work. 'She was called away to Brussels. Emergency budget vote. She'll be back in a week, possibly.'

Duo chewed uncertainly on his fingernail. 'She didn't leave any... okay. Okay, I guess.'

'I'd like to leave a message,' Zechs said. 'You have some way of reaching her, presumably.'

'She isn't checking voicemail.' Columbia ducked left to grab the phone as it rang, tucking the receiver to his ear. 'Lady Une's office. No, I'm afraid she's unavailable.'

Duo turned on his heel and left. Zechs rubbed at his neck, and plucked a pen from Columbia's desk. He wrote a note, nothing more than his address at the hotel and a contact number, and a request for immediate discussion, when she had the time. He set it atop Columbia's boxes. 'Have her ring me,' he said. Columbia gave him a distracted nod, and ignored him thereafter.

Duo hadn't waited on him. Other Preventers, agents he didn't know, sat in cubicles on the main floor, busily working on something. There was a mission board, which he noted only because Duo's name was on it. He was still listed as on leave. Noin was listed too. He hadn't thought of her, he realised, in days, weeks even, since writing the letters. The letters he had never sent. Well, she knew the contents now, if she had been anywhere near a television. The board listed her as on mission, piloting somewhere in South America. He felt only a small pang for missing her. Her advice. She might have known what to do about Duo. Then again, she probably wouldn't approve.

He rode the lift back to the lobby, and from there he took the stairs to the basement level. At the far end of the plain cement corridor there was a locked door. He opened his wallet for the badge he hadn't had to use in more than a month. He swiped it across the ID reader, and the maglock clicked for him. He let himself into the Preventers locker room.

'Duo?' he called, turning left past the women's interior door and taking the right for the men's. He set his hand to the wood, about to push through, and only just stepped back in time to avoid being hit as it swung open on him instead. An older agent, mid-forties, perhaps. He nodded gruffly at Zechs, and walked by without a word.

Zechs entered the locker room. 'Duo?' he called again. The first row of lockers was empty, unremarkable. He turned the corner, and came about for the second row. 'There you are,' he said, relieved at least to have guessed correctly. 'I left a message with Une. I think we should stay away until she rings us. We don't know what implications the press leak is going to have for the organisation, but at the least it's a blow to our ability to move about the city anonymously.' He ventured near, leaning a shoulder on a locker. 'We-- what's that smell?'

Duo stood before an open locker. It had his name written in marker on tape above the door, just like every other occupied locker. But the odour was coming from his locker. And there was a strange noise as well. A buzzing. Zechs reared back in surprise when Duo reached in, and a cloud of flies erupted outward.

'What is that,' Zechs demanded tensely. Duo emerged with something bloody and furry, holding it by the tail. A rat.

'They didn't know I'd be gone for so long,' Duo said, his voice quiet, unemotional. He tossed the dead rat into a nearby garbage bin. 'They were probably told it was just a short mission or something. They pull some dumbass prank, and then they have to live with the smell all this time. It's kind of funny, really. They didn't want to take it out because they kept thinking I'd be back. Did it to themselves.'

'This isn't a prank.' Zechs stepped wide around the bin and opened Duo's locker wide. There was rat blood on the clothes he'd left in the locker, a pair of folded tees and whatever was beneath it. Duo binned it all without looking at it, wiping his hand on a mangy gym rag. He tossed out the Preventers uniform shirt, the boots, and the leather shoulder holster for his gun. The gun he checked, first the mag and then the chamber, and tucked it under the back of his shirt, into his denims. There was only one other item in the locker, and Zechs glared as Duo removed it. A liquor bottle. But Duo only threw that in the bin as well, and then he closed the locker and flipped the combination lock.

'You were serious about the racism.'

'You thought I was lying?' Duo draped the chain of his badge over his neck. 'I'm going to check in with my captain. I'll see you around.'

'That's it?' Zechs grabbed him by the arm as he tried to pass. Duo glared up at him, but Zechs refused to release him. 'Everything that's happened means nothing to you. I mean nothing to you.'

'Not a damn thing,' Duo said flatly. 'If I don't ever have to think about that place again then I don't plan on it.'

'I thought...' He was gripping hard enough to bruise. He knew it, but he couldn't make himself let go. Duo's mouth was a thin line that might have been pain, might have been rage at a world that seemed determined to grind him out of existence. But not before he gave as good as he got.

He let Duo put a hand on his chest and push him away. He let Duo walk out, the click of his boot heels on the tile echoing after him like warning shots.

Well. Duo wasn't the only one who could be stubborn, and Zechs knew more than most about where to aim to achieve exactly what you wanted. Time to fire a shot of his own, and if Duo wanted to curse him for it, then that would be what happened, but damn if Zechs would stay ignored just because Duo wished to hide him away.

He pulled the bag out of the trash bin and wrapped it closed with a fist. He was alone in the corridor and walking back to the lifts. Anger was a slow burn in his belly, almost comforting in its familiarity. Bad enough to have been sentenced to that damn Centre and its failures. It was outright ridiculous for Une to call them back like lap dogs, forever dependent on her favour for their own sanity. He didn't need Preventers to go back to Mars, if that was what he really wanted; she couldn't stop him joining the Terraforming as a volunteer, a citizen with no ties to her. There would be no tabloids there, no accusing eyes-- well. No more than the agents he'd once fought beside, who were clearly capable of enacting their own form of retaliation. But he'd never been pranked like Duo had, and he didn't mistake it for a harmless prank. Duo had been right about one thing. They'd lived with the smell of a rotting carcass in Duo's locker for nearly forty days because they wanted him to know exactly how much danger he was in if he stayed. There were all kinds of ways to deliver a warning.

He stepped off the lift when it reached the sixth storey again. Only a few heads looked up to see who had arrived; most continued on with their work. Duo was no-where to be seen. Zechs crossed the floor with long strides, not troubling to conceal his destination. He did have eyes on him by the time he reached the offices lining the far wall. He knocked once on the door labelled 'Captain Sernan', and entered without awaiting permission.

The man seated at the desk by the window blinked at him in startlement, but it quickly became recognition. 'Zechs Merquise,' he said. 'Agent, uh--'

'Wind,' Zechs replied shortly. The man was rising, hand out to clasp his, and Zechs pressed it briefly, reluctantly. 'Have we met?'

'A long time ago, sir. I was a lieutenant in OZ. Class of 190.' Sernan was enthusiastically squeezing his hand, not letting him go, and Zechs bit back an impatient reminder. 'I had the pleasure of Instructor Noin's guiding hand. And some of her sharper words. She did double duty, whipping me into shape.'

His hand was finally released. He flexed it as it tingled from human contact. 'Where were you stationed? I don't recall your name on the deployment lists.'

'MO-V.' Sernan sat, waving Zechs to the chair opposite him. Zechs declined with a shake of his head. 'Mechanic Corps,' Sernan added, though he noticed the bag Zechs was carrying now, and his eyes stayed on it. 'Worked on the Germinas 01 and the other G-Suits. Lady Une called me back in to Earth last year, though. Filling out the ranks of Eagle One. I suppose the list of trustworthy officers was getting slim.'

'Mechanic.' Zechs hefted the garbage bag, spinning it in his fingers. 'You saw combat?'

'Yes, sir,' Sernan said flatly, his eyes snapping back up to Zechs' face at the challenge. Half-Asian, perhaps, not unlike Heero Yuy, with eyes a little too rounded, but nut-brown like his skin, and hair a thick black, though shaved down on the sides and only bristling over the top. He did look familiar. They might have known each other at the Academy, a lifetime ago.

'Then you know when you have combat starting in your own ranks,' Zechs said, and put the bag on Sernan's desk. When he released the twist of the loose ends, a pair of buzzing flies escaped, along with a noxious cloud of odor, making Sernan rear back in surprise. 'This was in Duo Maxwell's locker. It was put there by his fellow agents.'

Sernan inhaled slowly, making no move to touch the bag. 'You have proof of that?'

'He was gone for weeks and no-one took it out or reported it. Isn't that proof enough?' Zechs nodded to the bag. 'He'll be checking in. You can ask him about it then. And about the other incidents. You're gearing up for a case of friendly fire.'

'Now wait a minute.' Sernan stood, leaning over his desk with both palms planted flat to either side of the bag. 'I don't take that accusation lightly. I know you've been on Mars, Agent Wind, so maybe you don't have a full picture of what we do here on Earth. But Eagle One has been in a struggle for its existence since the day we signed our contracts. We do the dirty work, sir, the dangerous work, and we're out there without suits, without armoured tanks, without backup. We're fighting a war with sidearms. You're damn right my men are tense and tired. But if there is dissension in the ranks, it does not rise to that level.'

'Yet.' Zechs let the word linger between them. 'You can't afford to turn a blind eye and trust that they'll settle it. Your job as a commander is to intervene. You have a Gundam Pilot surrounded by men whose companions he killed and whose enmity he earned in a dozen battles. We're not all so able to turn our backs on that just because we've been ordered to.'

'I suppose you have a recommendation?'

'A very simple one,' Zechs answered. 'Find the lead troublemaker and remove him. This isn't a situation that gets better. It's only a situation that ends.'

Sernan crossed his arms over his chest. It was a battle of wills, now, but one that lasted only a minute. Sernan's eyes flicked down to the bag, and then back up to Zechs.

'You're right,' he agreed gruffly. 'And you were right to bring this to my attention. Agent.'

Zechs took the reminder of his own rank with as much grace as he could muster. 'Thank you, Captain.'

Sernan sat. 'Dismissed,' he said. 'And take that with you. Dispose of it properly.'

'Of course.' Zechs tied the bag closed, this time, and removed it without a further word. He shut Sernan's door behind him, and took a long look around the floor. Anyone who'd been watching for him to come out was studiously back at work now, and he couldn't tell if anyone knew what he was carrying.

But he felt eyes on his back when he brought the bag to the garbage chute in the wall, and dumped it uncerimoniously down.

 

**

 

He returned to his hotel and found that housekeeping had been in, leaving the bed impeccable and his luggage discreetly placed to the side. Fresh suspicion made him check it, but he didn't have anything personal left to be plundered and sold to the media. So far as he could tell, his belongings hadn't been disturbed, only moved out of the way. Just to be sure, though, he removed his keys and put them in his pocket. It would be easy enough for someone to copy them while he was away, and the last thing he needed was a break-in.

It was barely afternoon. He'd been at Preventers HQ for less than an hour. It had taken longer to get out of downtown traffic than it had to bring the last three crazy weeks to a close.

Not quite a close. There was still Une to deal with, whenever she returned his call. If she returned his call. The mood he was in, he was half ready to quit and be done. More than half.

He ordered room service, a steak and lobster tail, and he chose a wine by looking at the price and picking the most expensive bottle. His Preventers salary might be paltry, but he'd used little of it on Mars and there was nothing to stop him blowing it on a few wild nights before he had to return to reality. He felt a little wild.

He was halfway through the steak and most of the way through the bottle when he heard the knock at the door. He looked up from contemplating the sharp serrations of his knife. 'Come,' he said tentatively, before realising he wouldn't be heard. He left his cutlery balanced on the edge of his fine porcelain plate and rose to answer the door himself.

It was the desk manager, looking supremely uncomfortable standing in front of him. 'The young man didn't have a keycard,' the manager began, 'but he was very insistent...'

'Move,' a voice behind him ordered, and the manager moved fast. Duo was behind him, and with the thundercloud face he wore, Zechs didn't waste any time asking questions. He moved, too, out of the way so that Duo could stomp past him into the suite.

'Thank you,' Zechs quietly told the manager, and shut the door. He locked it, though whether it was for his own protection or Duo's he wasn't sure. He could feel violence in the air. One of them was going to get hurt, and the last thing they needed was publicity if the manager took it into his head to try and barge back in.

Duo turned smartly to face him. His fists were clenched at his side. He opened with a direct sally.

'You motherfucking idiot,' he said, each syllable pronounced very precisely through grinding jaws.

Zechs leant back on the door. 'Would it speed matters up if you just told me what I did instead of waiting for me to guess? The last thing I knew--'

'You don't know a god-damn thing. There are snow-babies on L2 who know more than you.' Duo began a long stalk about the suite, stopping at the small table where Zechs had been eating his meal. He hooked the wine bottle near with a finger, peering at the label. He drank from the bottle, and took it with him when he moved on. 'You went to my captain.'

Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. 'Did I damage your pride?' he asked delicately. 'Yes. I went above your head and I did it without asking. This is enough to make you storm over here and pick up a bottle?'

'Don't flatter yourself. You weren't even close to the first stop.' Duo reached the end of the wine in another swallow, as it was. He tossed the bottle away, letting it fall carelessly to the thick carpet. 'I had to stop by Payroll. I had to stop at the Quartermaster to turn in my gun. I had to go to the IG.'

'The Inspector General?' Zechs left the safety of the door slowly. 'Because of the news leak?'

'Because I've been suspended without pay pending an investigation into my suitability to remain in Preventers.'

'What?'

Duo found the mini-bar. He yanked open the gate and rifled the bottles. 'Yeah. Fun fact. When you're the source of serious acrimony on the team, it turns out it's more efficient to remove one person than everyone who hates on you. And since I have you to thank for bringing the situation to my captain's attention, I figured you could spring for cab fare. I need to head uptown and empty my apartment, since I can't fucking pay for it now.'

Zechs rubbed his neck. 'You don't have any savings?'

'That's your question.' Duo ripped the cap off a palm-sized bottle of scotch. 'No. I don't. I didn't have a fucking bank account until two years ago, and I didn't have anything legitimate to put in it until this job.' He tilted his back to drink. 'And the best part--' He wiped his mouth and dropped the bottle into the trash. 'Best part is I knew this whole thing was a fucking fraud. If I could have stayed in the colonies without every half-baked conspiracy landing on my welcome mat I would have done it, but Preventers seemed like the only way to keep them off my back. Does that have any pull with the IG, you think? You put me back out there and Preventers are still going to have to be on me like white on rice, which means it's probably only a year or so until I get arrested for collaborating with White Fang or Vulkanus or Third Circle--'

Zechs stopped him from opening a second bottle. 'Did you come here drunk?'

Now came the violence. Duo exploded into motion, shoving him back with both hands and following with a swing that Zechs only barely ducked. He wasn't as quick with the next one. Duo caught him by the arm and jerked him low, into the upward trajectory of his bony knee. Zechs doubled over with a gasp, clutching his throbbing privates. He only just caught Duo by the back of his shirt on the way by. They swung in a circle, propelled by Duo's momentum. Zechs tried to trip him, and Duo flung a fist at his nose. Zechs cursed him as his eyes watered, and gave up trying to keep it gentle. He threw Duo at the wall and kept him there with the weight of his own body, grabbed him by the back of the head and pulled at his hair until Duo squawked.

'Give,' Zechs croaked at him, grabbing at the elbow that tried to jab him and slamming it high to the wall by the wrist.

'You're gonna break my fucking neck!'

'Not if you give.' He applied just a bit more strength to make his point, but Duo was so tense he was afraid to push it. They really would do harm, if Duo didn't-- or if he didn't, but he knew Duo would walk out if he surrendered. 'Give,' he whispered. 'Please.'

Duo's rapid breaths slowed. Zechs slowly released his sweating grip on Duo's hair. Duo wrenched his head to the side, but only to lean his forehead against the wallpaper. 'Jesus,' he said, his voice thin and dry as dust.

Zechs stepped away. 'I'm sorry.'

'You should be.' Duo cracked his wrist, and slumped to the floor. Zechs sat carefully beside him, tucking his knees into his chest-- just in case. But Duo seemed drained of all will to fight. There was a red spot on his cheek where Zechs had crushed him to the wall. Zechs touched it with the back of his finger.

'I'm sorry,' he said again.

Duo turned his face away. 'I don't care. I really don't. It's just a job, and it's not like I liked it there. I just... I'm starting to run out of ideas.'

'If your captain is on a witch hunt, that will come out during the investigation.' Zechs dropped his head back to the wall. 'I thought he was taking me seriously. He seemed to understand.'

'He did. He might even be right.'

'You're not the problem. It would be a problem if we had an organisation made up of and dedicated only to protecting a certain kind of people. That's why we had a war.'

'Don't fucking tell me why the war happened.'

He took Duo's hand. Duo let him, which spoke more than anything to his state of mind. 'You came here drunk,' he said again. 'What am I supposed to do about that?'

'Mind your own damn business.' Duo said it dully. His fingers curled around Zechs'. 'You were the one who cared about personal choice. I'm choosing to celebrate my life blowing up because you couldn't keep your mouth shut.'

'I'll speak on your behalf to the IG.'

'Pass.' Duo finally looked at him. 'I was serious about that cab fare.'

'Later. I'll order food for you. You'll sober up faster if you eat.' Zechs swallowed. 'I can... I have money. I'd rather spend it on you anyway.'

Duo coughed, fading into a silent laugh. 'It's every revolutionary's dream,' he said, 'meeting a prince who can buy them shit.'

Zechs smiled involuntarily. 'Happy days.' He smoothed back Duo's hair, loose now from the braid. He stroked the cool dark strands. More lowlights in Duo's hair than highlights, as if it were made of shadows. The strands the clung to Duo's neck were damp with perspiration, but curled about his fingers with an obedience Duo would never display. He rubbed them between thumb and forefinger. He said, 'Take it down.'

Duo stared at him. 'You're high.'

'I'm very much not.' Maybe a little, to even ask it. Command it. No breath between them, not now, and there was still a hint of fight in Duo's edginess, the set of his jaw. Zechs didn't say it again. He slipped the little elastic band off the tip of the braid and pulled out the plaits, one row at a time, climbing them like verbetrae until he reached Duo's neck. Duo's hands were in fists by the end. Zechs ignored the warning, and told him, 'Shake it out.'

He didn't think it would happen. Duo was inhaling deeply through the nose, gearing up for a fight again. But when his hand rose, it just went to his hair, not to any of Zechs' vulnerable body parts. He loosened the braid more, the three long ropes over his shoulder, over his chest. He shook his head, almost tentatively, uncertain movement. The heavy swing of his hair stilled, hairs caught in static on the rumpled wool of his jumper. Zechs' jumper, navy blue that brought out the deep purple in his eyes.

'Better,' Zechs said, tried to say, through a throat gone tight. He dragged his fingers through, all the way through. Hair too fine and straight for tangles, unlike his. He cupped Duo's head, and pulled him near for a kiss. Duo's mouth was open for his, yielding to him, but his eyes slid away when they parted.

'I don't take it down ever.' Duo rested back against the wall, tugging at the jumper's hem, avoiding touching his own hair now. 'I'm not like you.'

Zechs nodded, then shook his head no. His voice was heavy and low. 'You will when I tell you to.'

Duo looked at him. It was all there in his face. 'Like hell, Zechs.'

Zechs took a lock of Duo's hair. He brushed Duo's pale collarbone with it. His cheek. His lower lip, plump from the pressure of their kiss.

'It's just hair.'

'Liar,' Zechs murmured.

'To you. You don't know why I have it.'

'Nothing is just anything with you.'

That amused him, for a moment, curling his mouth upward in a smile that went dark and sour quickly. He shoved it back from his face, behind his ears. Zechs stopped him. He wrapped a thick rope of it around his hand and used the leverage to drag Duo nearer, holding him captive. Duo shoved him, but it was half-hearted, and his grip in Zechs' shirt stayed, warm on the skin beneath, hot on his belly.

'Could've done that with the braid.'

'This is better. This is mine,' he corrected, even as Duo's hand slid south, toward Zechs' crotch. 'The braid belongs to someone else.'

'You get to brush it when it turns into a bush, then.'

'I'd like that.'

That wasn't the response Duo expected. He turned just a little pink, in the cheeks and his bare ears. He glanced away. Zechs made him look again, tugging at his hair until Duo reluctantly turned his head. He said, 'Your shyness surprises me.'

'I'm not shy,' Duo said gruffly. 'You're just being-- we're not a couple. You don't have to do the tender lovin' thing.'

In for a penny. With a recklessness that surprised himself, Zechs said the first thing that occurred to him. 'Maybe I want to sometimes.'

That threw Duo even more. Even with Zechs' hand on his face he tried to look away, eyes roving, lashes protectively low. Zechs kissed him, pressing his lips to Duo's temple, and sighed. 'Look at me.'

'Why? You wanna gaze into my eyes?'

'Yes.'

'Zechs,' Duo warned him.

'I want to read what you're hiding.' Duo looked up, but only so he could glare. 'You stubborn pig,' Zechs told him, and pushed him to the carpet, covering him with his body. He slid his hands up Duo's shirt, finding skin, finding tense muscle that reacted to his nearness, to his threat. 'This isn't only about what you want.'

'I'm looking,' Duo retorted. Combatively. Angry. Aroused. He could feel Duo hard against him. He ground their hips together, helpless to it even as he tried to control it. He lost whatever words he had to the need to taste Duo, crushing their mouths together. Duo bit him-- Duo bit him, not to hurt, but to urge him on. Yes. He was in flames, and damn Duo anyway. He scraped a knuckle on the carpet trying to open his trousers, lost scalp when Duo grabbed at his hair, pure revenge. He dragged that hand away and pinned it to the floor. He hauled Duo's leg up about his hip, grinding into him helplessly.

Duo tossed his head fitfully. 'Yeah,' he breathed. He broke out in gooseflesh when Zechs sucked on his neck.

Their clothes were in the way, and he couldn't wait that long. He made contact with Duo's flesh, fought his way past a stinging zip and wrapped his hand around Duo. Duo was trying to get to him, fumbling, rubbing, and whispering in his ear a litany of curses that ended only when Duo kicked him back, knocking him aside. 'God damn it,' Duo shuddered, shoving at his denims. 'Help me--'

Shoes. Zechs ripped at his shoes, dropped them to the side somewhere, and his own as well, stripped his trousers as fast as he could, tearing them off him. Bath. He stumbled to his feet, to the bath, for the complimentary toiletries display, knocking over the little bottles with a clumsy reach. Lotion. Duo was behind him, coming in with him, and Zechs pulled him near, pulled him onto the cold marble countertop, laying him back with his behind hanging over the edge, sliding lotion-slick into him with nothing but a mutual gasp to mark it. Duo's hand on the mirror left a smudge, fingers splayed wide.

He couldn't move for a minute. Couldn't move. He would leave bruises on Duo's hips if he didn't move, but he couldn't. Duo's knees hugged his waist, ankles locked behind him.

'Zechs,' Duo croaked.

He swallowed. Tried to. He rocked his hips, rocked Duo across the counter. Duo tried to balance himself and knocked the sink to run with his elbow. The lotion fell to the floor and spilled.

'Zechs,' Duo whispered, 'come on. Please.'

He bent for a kiss. He needed to. Duo's hair was in the way, his own hair, a barrier between their lips, but it spurred him on. He kissed Duo, deep and slow, stroking with his tongue as he stroked Duo with his hand, stroked with his hips, and time slowed with them, losing the urgency, dropping them into a well where time stopped. And Duo's face. Duo's face was open now, not hiding, not angry. Watching him. Puzzled, almost. Zechs watched him, too, afraid to say a word, afraid to say the wrong one. He loosened his hold on Duo's hip, slid it up his chest, instead, his heaving stomach, up to his forehead, to brush away his hair. Duo returned it. Duo touched him, not to hurt, not to arouse, just to touch. His fingers brushed against Zechs' hair, so gently he almost didn't feel it, then tugged, just a little bit.

It was like electricity, zapping him from head to groin. He groaned, helpless. Not a battle, not now. More like-- passion. It was harder to control, oddly, like this, and he couldn't, couldn't control it. His hips snapped without his thought, and Duo was shuddering, shaking, and his eyes closed and he started to say something and then didn't, biting his lip as he came. Zechs buried himself as deeply as he could, holding tight, flushing hot and red as he orgasmed. And it was on his mind, as he came out of the haze, that he might have to apologise for doing it this way. Their tacit agreement that sex shouldn't feel anything like love... this hadn't quite been right.

Duo moved first, if only to free himself from the awkward crunch between counter and mirror. He slid away from Zechs, sitting up slowly. He tested the sink, still running from his errant swing, and splashed his face with the water from the faucet. Zechs found him a flannel from the rack and Duo wet it for their clean-up. Zechs was careful, wiping his hands, his groin. Duo was rough, and dropped the cloth to the floor, out of the way in a corner. He pulled his hair over his shoulder, quickly separating three patches, braiding swiftly. He looked haggard.

Zechs cleared his throat. He murmured, 'I said I'd brush it for you.'

Duo stopped, fingers wrapped with hair. 'What?'

'You're messing it. Sideways.'

'I'm not-- going to be good at that part.'

Zechs inhaled. He pulled the roll of toilet paper from the wall, and used it to wipe up the spilled lotion. He binned it and left the bath. 'You've warned me before.'

'Then fucking listen.' Duo followed him out, but didn't stop at the pile of clothes as Zechs did. He crossed the suite, bare-legged, and went to the minibar, still open from earlier. Zechs turned to watch this, hoping Duo would only close it. He didn't. He emerged with a bottle, already uncapping it.

'Dont,' Zechs told him.

'Sober hasn't done me any favours lately.'

'You aren't trying very hard.'

Duo turned the bottle over and over in his hands. He broke the seal, but then didn't drink from it. Into the silence, he said, 'I thought everything would be... I thought everything would be so different after the war. L2. Everywhere, Earth.'

Zechs paused with his trousers in his hand. Duo had been so closed-mouthed after sex before that this sudden confession seemed wildly out of character. Or perhaps it was just finally in character. He looked his nineteen years, just now. A boy in want of reassurance that Zechs didn't have to give.

'Isn't it?' Zechs asked finally. 'Different.'

Duo shook his head minutely. 'No. Everything's the same as it's always been. Parliament's the same old men as Romafeller and the Alliance Council before that and whatever old men ruled things before that. And people are still hungry and fighting and angry and it's all...'

'It's all what?'

Duo shook his head again. Zechs moved to dress, or at least to sit on the couch, where his nudity wouldn't leave him standing bare in the middle of the suite. Duo picked at the label on his bottle. 'It's these rules,' Duo mumbled. 'Stupid rules. Like Preventers. Making detectives instead of soldiers. Codebooks and uniforms and rules for everything when what they really want us to do is shoot people and promise they were bad. I-- hate it. I hate the stupid fucking rules. They're just lies.' He tugged at his braid, rubbed his face. He threw the bottle at the bed.

Zechs shifted his trousers around on his lap. 'Duo,' he began.

'How do you know if there's something-- something seriously wrong with you?'

He'd thought the time for the wrong words was past. A mistake would be even more deadly now. He barely allowed himself to breathe. 'You don't,' he answered cautiously. 'Not until it's too late, and something is breaking.'

'I thought I had it together. I thought it would be one of the others. I hate it, that they can make it, and I can't. I couldn't be on L2, I couldn't even pretend to care about scrapping or living some kind of stupid normal life. I don't know fucking shit about normal. I want to... I just... I just...'

Zechs shifted a pillow left, shifted on the cushions. 'It's-- it's been a hard day. Hard month. What you're feeling is, I'm sure it's... it's natural. We could... we could go somewhere. Somewhere else.'

'You suck at this.' Duo tugged at the shirt dangling over his hips, and sat on the edge of the bed. 'I'm trying to say-- I'm trying to say-- Do you ever see things that change you so much you feel like you can't go back?'

He nodded stiffly. 'My life's been a series of them. Since I was six years old.'

'I'm.' Duo ran out of voice, rubbing his throat. He stared at the floor, at his hands. 'I'm worried what my Libra is going to be.'

He flinched. He had to cough to clear his throat. 'There isn't going to be a Libra in your life.' He just managed to keep his voice even, but he had to pause to go on. 'You're a better man. This... what you're doing now... isn't who you are. It's just what you need to get out of your system.'

Duo's shoulders were hunched. 'How do you know?'

'Everyone knows. It's why we can stand you being such a shit while you sort yourself out.'

Duo glanced up, piqued. Zechs forced a smile. Duo returned it, a small and worn little upturn of the lips.

'You can drive yourself mad imagining all the ifs,' Zechs told him. 'That's the best I've got. Don't go down that road.'

'Is it worth it?' Duo demanded, brushing right past his advice. 'Is it worth all of this to lock up some bad guys?'

Zechs gave up trying to lighten it, and answered honestly. 'If you can't answer yes to that question, you need to look for another job.'

'Is “maybe” enough?'

'Duo...' Zechs licked his lips. 'I don't know. It is for me. I can't answer for you.'

Duo looked away, brushing a rough knuckle over his nose. His long toes picked at the carpet beneath his feet.

'Is there ever enough to fill what's missing in you, Duo?' Zechs asked him. 'Enough sex. Enough alcohol. Enough... anything?'

Duo exhaled. 'I think I need help.'

'No, you don't. Come to Mars with me.'

'Mars?' Duo pulled hard at his braid, shaking his head. 'I don't-- I don't know. No, I can't go to Mars. I'm under investigation.'

'Only if you stay in Preventers. It's a choice.' Zechs shrugged awkwardly, telling himself he didn't regret saying it aloud. 'Think about it. Don't answer yet. Just think.'

Duo didn't say anything to that. He was troubled. But he didn't say anything, and Zechs didn't either. He put on his trousers, and he called room service to order another meal. And that was that.

 

**

 

'The fuck is golf?'

'You swing a stick at a ball,' he said, amused. He shifted so he could feel Duo's warmth against him, resting against the limp couch cushions. The club music almost muted their conversation, but it was only an excuse to bend his lips toward Duo's neck, touch his lips to Duo's ear. 'You must have golf in the colonies.'

Duo let out an ungentlemanly snort. Zechs cupped a hand around his belly, spreading his fingers wide over the warm flannel of Duo's shirt.

'Not on L2, I guess,' Duo muttered. 'So you play this game?'

'I'll show you how. I can't imagine you'd be bad at it-- it's just hand-eye coordination. Hitting a distant target.' He uncapped his water and sipped from it, and offered it to Duo. 'There are golf outfits. I'll buy you one. You'll be handsome.'

'I don't know why you feel this need to dress me up like a doll.' Duo was grumpy. Duo had been grumpy all night, moody all week. But he seemed to like the club well enough, or at least the anonymity it offered. No-one looked twice at them here. They were too busy occupying every free surface to do all sorts of things men couldn't do to each other in public. Social mores had come a long way since Romafeller had been defeated, but not that far.

And that was nothing to say about the possibility of publicity attached to certain names that had helped to defeat them. The news about their reveal at rehab seemed to have died down, drowned out by new celebrity adventures, but it seemed wise to disguise themselves in public. Duo wore a cap over his hair, pulled low over his eyes, and Zechs had pulled his back into a ponytail that he tucked into the tall collar of his coat. The club's dim lighting protected them. Duo protected himself by spending most of his time staring into his drinks.

He didn't drink them. Mostly. Zechs watched him, wary of the moment it would tip out of control, but so far Duo just ordered them and held them, as if he couldn't conceive of not having one in his hand. Maybe it wasn't much of a step out of alcoholism, but-- no. There was no but. He knew it was bad. But the only weapon he really had to distract Duo was himself, and he was starting to realise that was as bad a road as the alcohol.

'You're still going back to Mars?' Duo asked him suddenly.

Zechs broke away from staring at the DJ. 'What? Yes. I don't see the point in staying here.'

'What if Une won't let you go back? I heard a rumour they were drawing down the base there.'

'If she won't continue the mission, I'll go on my own.'

'Why, though? It's an empty planet.'

'Nothing is really empty.' He took Duo's hand as it rose, setting the glass of scotch it held to the sticky floor at their feet. He played with Duo's fingers, tracking the strong tendons in Duo's hand and wrist. 'There's so much to explore there. It's untouched. Don't you want to see it? Be the first to be there? You could be the first human eyes to see red mountains. Uncover an ice crater. Trek one of the deserts.'

'I don't care about that shit.' Duo freed his hand with a flap, slumping back into the cushions. 'I've never lived anywhere but a city. At least San Francisco isn't a craphole like Connto on L2.'

'I've never been there,' Zechs said, disappointed by Duo's dismissive attitude.

'Bad food, worse people. You can't get a car down the street because of the potholes, or maybe the gang traps.' Duo pulled a knee up to his chest. 'We don't really have a lot in common, do we.'

'I don't think that matters.'

'I know what you...'

He waited for Duo to finish. 'What?'

Duo pulled up the other knee. 'Never mind.'

Zechs sighed. 'Do you want to leave? It's getting late.'

'Yeah. Don't want to miss an early morning of laying around and fucking each other brainless.' Duo shoved to his feet. His toe nudged at the liquor glass. But he left it, and walked away. Zechs followed, wondering at him.

They were stopped at the hotel desk by a sleepy night clerk. 'Mr Merquise,' he was hailed. 'You have a message.' He held out a slip of folded paper. 'A call.'

'Thank you.' His stomach was already sinking, though. He'd only given the hotel number to one person. Duo's bleak expression showed that he had guessed, too. He knew before he read the printed words. Lady Une.

'She's back in the city,' he told Duo. 'She wants to see-- you.' He extended the paper.

Duo didn't take it. 'Me. Not both of us.'

'It only mentions you.'

'At least we know she keeps up with the news while she's out of country.' Duo stuffed his hands into his pockets, and headed for the lifts. Zechs dragged after him, his steps slow as he tried to suss out this new mood. So Une knew enough about what had happened at the Centre and the results to know Duo would be with him at the hotel-- that was not unexpected. The media had played up questions about their relationship for days before some new scandal had replaced them. Perhaps it was only that they'd tried Duo's apartment and found it already let to a new renter. It had been nearly three weeks. Almost as long as Zechs had been banished to rehabilitation.

'We can go in tomorrow morning,' Zechs said, as they rode the lift up to their suite. 'Or we don't have to go in at all. Resign.'

'I'm not quitting while I'm under investigation. I'll look guilty.'

'You haven't been charged with anything.'

'They'll find something.'

Zechs didn't pretend otherwise. 'That only matters if you care what they think.'

'I'm not a child. Don't talk to me like one.' Duo swiped his card at their door, and shoved inside. 'If she asks me to quit, I'm not going to. She can fucking fire me, and I'll file a grievance. I want it on record.'

'Fine.' Zechs closed the door and leant on it. 'Do you want me there?'

Duo paused with his hands at his hem. Then he stripped his shirt, and tossed it to the carpet. 'Whatever,' he said. Zechs pursed his lips, and took that as a yes.

'Sleep,' he advised. 'You can go in angry and pumped if you like, but Une will win if you blow too hot and make a mistake. Keep your calm and keep to your plan. She learnt from Treize. She's going to go in hard and she'll be three steps ahead of where you think she'll be. It's high-stakes chess.'

Duo stripped his trousers, and ripped the bedding apart to crawl in. 'That's what's so annoying about you Ozzies,' he said. 'You play like it's a game. Games have rules, so you know how to cheat. Games are about winning prizes.'

'You've never played a game to win?' Zechs asked.

'I fought a war to win,' Duo said, and dragged a pillow over his head. 'I'll go in angry and pumped and one of us will walk away and the other one will be dead.'

Zechs sighed, and covered him with the duvet. 'Then they really will fire you, if you kill the Director.'

Duo snorted into the pillow. 'Don't even tempt me,' he mumbled tiredly.

 

**

 

As it happened, there wasn't even time to get angry. Une was ready for them, and the move she had in her pocket was a damn good one.

'Ah, Agent Maxwell,' she greeted them, as her secretary Columbia led them into her office. 'Welcome back. I presume you can be back on active duty by Monday?'

Duo stood blinking, caught mid-stride. The banked energy of his intent to come in hot left him off his guard, wavering. 'Uh,' he said, 'Mon-- yeah. Um--'

Zechs closed the door on Columbia's nosy attempt to listen in. 'Pardon,' he opened politely, 'but the status of the Inspector General's investigation?'

'Dismissed and erased,' Une replied briskly. She took the tall leather chair behind her desk and tossed a file to the large desk between them. 'There will be no mark on your record, Agent. And no repercussions.'

Duo sat slowly, taking the much smaller wooden chair placed for guests and slouching low in it. He almost bit his thumbnail, but stopped himself. Zechs came to stand behind him, but thought better of that, too, not wanting to give the impression that Duo needed protection from someone older and stronger. So he sat in the second chair, though he sat straight-backed, arms resting rigidly beside his torso.

'My captain doesn't trust me,' Duo said bluntly.

'Captain Sernan has been transferred to Hong Kong to start to a second Preventers unit,' Une answered. 'We'll be interviewing for a new position. In the meanwhile, Sally Po will come in from the Rovers to serve as Acting Captain.'

'My team.'

'May not be as much of a problem as you think.' Une broke her icy facade for a moment, gazing at Duo with something that was almost-- but not quite-- sympathy. 'Someone on your team alerted me, anonymously, to the investigation. In the belief that a certain amount of hazing was over the line. You have defenders, Agent. It's up to you to build that into trust.' She paused. 'May I suggest that you might want to rethink the tactic of trying to silently take everything they dish out. They're waiting for you to react. So react. And show them exactly where that line is.'

Duo opened his mouth, and closed it. He put his fingernail between his teeth, but not for long. He lowered his hand with a tiny curve of his lip. 'I'll take that under advisement, Director.'

Une nodded. She looked at Zechs, finally acknowledging him. 'You're late for check-in,' she said.

Zechs only raised an eyebrow. 'How remiss of me.'

'Monday,' she said. 'Dismissed, gentlemen.'

Zechs stood. Duo didn't. As Zechs hesitated, wondering why Duo would push it when they were about to walk free without so much as a mention of the disaster at the Centre, without so much as a hint of real reprimand for dereliction of duty, Duo sat with his fingernail between his teeth again, and then he leant forward, to tap Une's desk.

He said, 'I want a panel.'

Now it was Une who blinked. Duo had made his move, and it was as good as hers. 'A panel, Maxwell?'

'A panel. On modernising Preventers. You said you're opening a new office. You're bringing in the Rovers. And you still want Chang. If you ever plan on being more than a few units with a couple of token colonials, you need real planning. Open a panel, give them the scope to look into real solutions, the power to issue a real report with regulatory force. I want to be on it. I want Captain Sernan on it.'

'He accused you,' Une pointed out, but she was looking at Duo with real interest now.

'He had a point. I am disruptive. The why is harder, and it's going to be harder until we have pathways for integrating mixed teams. Eagle One was supposed to be the testing grounds. Prove you take it seriously and your agents will follow your lead. Enough of them, anyway. The rest will think it's just optics and soundbites, but they'll have to follow where everyone else is leading, and one day there will be enough of the other kind that the bad ones will self-select out.'

Une tapped her fingers on the desk one by one. 'Draft a charter,' she said at last. 'I'll support it. And if you come up with real proposals, then you have my word I'll implement them.'

'You implement them, and you have my word I'll believe you,' Duo said. Now he stood. And extended a hand across the desk. 'Deal?'

Une covered her lips with a hand. But her laugh escaped anyway. She rose, and grasped Duo's hand firmly. 'Deal, Agent. And so we have peace at last.'

'For now,' Duo corrected. 'It won't hurt us to renegotiate terms every so often.'

'Then I'll be asking terms from you, Maxwell.'

'That I expect, Director.'

She didn't release his hand when he would have let go. 'Names,' she said.

Duo stilled. 'Whose names.'

'You deal with the threats inside Preventers, and I will be very grateful. But my job is to look at the threats outside of Preventers. And you're in a position to hand over intelligence we may not get from any other source. The Resistance didn't all lay aside swords for plowshares, Maxwell. And I have the suspicion you know a lot of names. People who haven't played by the rules the way you have.'

It was the wrong thing to say. Duo yanked his hand back. 'More games,' he muttered, and rubbed his hands on his jeans. 'No. No, I'm not doing that. You want names, you get them the normal way. By evaluating the existing threat and acting when they do. Not rounding up people for crimes they might commit, for associations they had during the war.'

'We're not planning mass arrests. But we are an organisation dedicated to watching. And if it's balance you're looking for, I can assure you we're watching literal hundreds of your former enemies. But the Resistance can't be discounted just because your political bias wishes it.'

'My political bias remembers what happened with the Alliance came knocking with their lists and their questions, and my political bias remembers that not too many of those people survived to the end of the war.' Duo turned his back on her, and that was optic enough for Une's mouth to go tight with displeasure. 'No is my final word on the topic. I joined Preventers because I believed this is something worth doing. But not if we do it the same way it's been done by every tyrant and king-maker from the last century of piss-and-water. So investigate me or sack me or let me walk out the door, but those are the choices.'

Zechs gripped the back of his chair, half expecting Une to summon the guards and throw them into the brig. But where he searched her face for rage and madness of the past, he found only a certain calculated-- enjoyment. Pleasure in the game. The way Treize had looked, when Zechs had managed the occasional check in chess. He'd never won a game against the master, but the pleasure had all been in a game well-played.

'Then we'll leave it at no,' she answered Duo quietly. 'But I trust you to come to me if-- and when-- a colonial threat arrives on our doorstep.'

Duo's shoulders were tense with relief, though not an iota of it showed on his face. One day he'd be almost as good as Une, Zechs thought, and didn't know if he liked the idea.

'At the first whiff,' Duo said, and opened the door and left.

They didn't speak to each other until they were in the lobby. Duo ripped off his badge as soon as they were past the desk, scratching at his neck as if the chain had bit at him. 'Names,' he hissed. 'Like hell that's the last time we're going to visit that little issue. I can't believe the balls on that woman!'

'You're lucky she thought the same of you.' Zechs removed his own badge, tucking it into a pocket. 'If you were another agent she might have cut you off. Or forced you on it. You did take an oath.'

'Not for that!' Duo kicked at a potted ficus, and threw himself onto a low settee. Zechs crouched near him, rolling his neck to crack it, shaking the tension out of his hands. Not a single mention of the Centre. That had to be deliberate. A bargain, and she'd known he'd spot it. Trading his freedom for Duo's. If he didn't protest, she wouldn't send him back to the Centre to complete his sentence. All in all, she might be a better player than Treize. Treize had played the long game, but he'd overlooked the personal details as trivial. Not Une.

'You wouldn't have given names,' Duo spat.

Zechs rubbed his kneecaps. He inhaled. 'I did,' he said.

Duo stopped in the act of stripping leaves off the tree. His eyes bored into Zechs. He didn't say No; he didn't ask why, or beg Zechs to say he was lying.

'By any and every measure I should be in a deep, dark prison cell,' Zechs said bitterly. He shoved to his feet and paced away, but the desk guard was watching them, and he didn't want to invite an interruption. 'By any and every measure, letting me leave of my own free will to Mars is a breach of conscience and duty. Except under one circumstance. In which having me under her thumb and cooperating is more valuable than having me under guard and resisting.'

'So the Lightning Count gave up his compatriots.'

'Is it so morally wrong? You fought a war on us. Wouldn't you fight it again? Haven't you been fighting it all along, in Preventers? Whether it's OZ or Resistance or White Fang--'

Duo sat forward sharply. 'Who did you give up from the Resistance?'

Zechs hesitated. 'I didn't-- it was just names, Duo, just watching, as Une said. No-one's been arrested. And I hardly gave up anyone who wasn't already on a list we gathered from somewhere else.'

'Who, damn it?'

Zechs rubbed the streaky metal of his badge with his thumb. 'Howard,' he said. 'I gave them Howard and the Peacemillion.'

Duo didn't say anything immediately. The silence stretched out, filled only with their breathing, with the gentle drip of the fountain. He couldn't look, but from the corners of his eyes he saw that Duo stared away, as well, out the wide windows onto the street. His hands were in fists. His hands were always in fists.

He heard Duo swallow, it was that quiet. Duo said, 'I read the letter you wrote to me at the Centre.'

Zechs nodded once. 'I know. The news.'

'No. It wasn't in the news. It was in your shirt.' Duo's voice went so dry it vanished, and he had to swallow again. 'Your shirt, one night, and it went under the bed. I didn't-- didn't steal it. But I read it. You didn't want to see me after we left there.'

'I didn't-- I don't know. I don't know what to say about this.'

'So everything went to hell and I-- asked. Begged. So maybe this is what happens. What the fuck do we know about each other? We weren't in the best shape at the Centre. It felt like a connection. It wasn't. You're a junkie. I'm a souse. All we've got is a couple of bad reasons for feeling sorry for ourselves, and that's a short walk to Sayonara.'

'Stop it.'

'Did you give them my name?' Duo was on his feet now, his voice barely loud enough to qualify as a whisper. 'Did you give them Heero Yuy and the Gundam Pilots? That's why she wants us in-house. Where she can watch us without having to strain her eyes. I knew Preventers weren't perfect, I knew it never would be. But I didn't think we'd fail because we only existed to eat our own tail. This is how it ends. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.'

'So forget about all of it,' Zechs implored him, grabbing Duo by the arms and physically shaking him. 'Resign. Walk away. Come to Mars with me. I don't want to never see you again, I want-- I want us to be permanent.' Duo's face went blank with shock, and Zechs shook him again. 'You'll run if I say anything more– potent than that.'

'What makes you think I'm not out the door already?' Duo demanded hoarsely. 'There is nothing happening here that's going to outlast the weekend. You're the one who kept saying it was wrong.'

'You've been out the door since the first time we fucked. And yet you stay.' He had to breathe, but he couldn't, with Duo glaring him down, trying to mask his own fear. 'I think you can't stand it when things get too real. You nag that it should be, then run when it is.'

Duo was trembling in his hold, so tense he was going to shatter. 'What happens when my work suffers. What happens when people notice.'

'You know how to balance it. We both do.'

'I don't want balance. You don't do this-- act like this-- this isn't about balance.'

'Then go back to rehab.'

Duo was dead quiet. Zechs took his mouth, rough because he couldn't not be, forgetting even about the guard before he heard footsteps headed toward them, and he made himself break away. Duo resisted him, anyway, Duo always resisted him. Duo whipped his head away as soon as he was free. Zechs gripped a fist in his shirt, and released him.

Duo licked his lips, and said, 'I was thinking of going back.'

Zechs wiped his face. 'To rehab.'

'To fucking Pluto.'

That was it. That was the last of his strength, the last of his willpower. He was done. 'I think you should go, then,' he said, or tried to. The words formed, but he didn't have voice for them.

Duo's hands were shaking. He brushed at his hair. 'I just said-- thinking about it.'

'You don't mull things. You decide, then you do it. You're a creature of impulses.'

'Wonder where I got that from.'

'Where did you? I'd honestly like to know.'

The guard seemed to have decided they weren't making trouble. Or didn't have the guts to interrupt them after all. Duo was wound tighter than a spring, a gun about to go off. He chewed on the edge of his fingernail, and then his hand just rested against his mouth. He looked off into non-thoughts, his eyes dead, unblinking.

Zechs forced himself to breathe, and said, 'We should go furniture shopping.'

That stirred Duo into an uncertain laugh. 'What?'

'For your apartment. You'll have to rent an apartment again, if you're staying.'

'My what?' Duo looked up at him, daze brewing slowly into a storm. 'It's a postal address, not a home. What the fuck do I need furniture for?'

'You're sick of hotels. Let me help you make it a home. It would be nice to stay somewhere else sometimes.'

'This is not a-- not a relationship. You're not coming home to meet my damn mother.'

'Our mothers are dead. But it is a relationship, Duo. It has been for weeks.'

'No,' Duo denied him, agitated. 'No, it's not a--' He breathed for a moment, as if it were all he could manage. 'It's not.'

He wanted to crush Duo close, wrap his arms around him, hold him like lovers were supposed to be able to do. He couldn't, and he didn't try, and he knew more than ever that he never would. A better man would have walked away. A smarter man. But even if he wavered, Duo didn't, or couldn't, and so Zechs didn't, either. He breathed, and it was all he could manage. 'Why are you always so bloody angry?'

'I survived,' Duo said, and that was really all that could be said about that.


	6. Trowa - One

April AC 205

 

It was a cold day. He liked the cold days. Coffee tasted hotter, sheets on beds felt more welcoming, morning daybreak softer and pinker. He had left the window open last night, content with the safety of the top floor and a gun under the pillow, another under the mattress. He woke with his pointer finger on the trigger, and rested there, one shoulder bare to the cold, to anticipation, in no hurry to move. Contented.

The hotel bath was luxurious, by his standards, an expanse of green marble tile and painstakingly streak-free glass. He set the water almost to burning and let it pound on the back of his neck, spattering the floor everywhere with his soap suds and using two towels to dry himself. He stood naked in front of the full-length mirror to shave, scraping his chin with the sharp blade of the razor and rinsing away millimetres of dark brown hair. He patted his cheeks with the hotel's branded aftershave, sniffing the scent of patchouli and persimmon. He dressed, socks, boxers, ankle holster, and rested an elbow on the window frame as he ate his breakfast oats. He'd never been to Singapore. It looked like any other city on Earth-- the highrise glass architecture, glowing orange and blue now as the sun rose above the skyline, grey water at the Port, neon lights that never turned off. Pretty enough, if that was all you ever got to see of the planet.

He was buttoning his dress shirt when his phone chimed. He tapped it on, and accepted the video chat invitation. 'Something up?' he answered, propping the phone in the dock as he pulled on his tie, still knotted from the night before, and tightened it to his throat.

 _'Hello to you, too.'_ Quatre was somewhere dark, glowing literally with a soft yellow aura. It suited him, Trowa thought idly, wunderkind politiboy. _'You're still due back tomorrow?'_

'Done later today.' Trowa picked up his cufflinks, jingling them together to tinkle like bells in his palm. They were a loan from the man in the small frame, who smiled without prompting. 'Why? You're not planetside?'

_'I am, actually. Last-minute invitation to a conference in California on something you care nothing about. Time to see me?'_

'Sure.' He pinned his cuffs. 'Dinner somewhere?'

_'Please let me pick, this time. I refuse to ingest, or not ingest, as it were, whatever comes off a so-called food cart in front of your hotel.'_

That was his prompt. Trowa obediently turned his lips upward. 'I can live with that.'

_'Excellent. I'm bringing a third, if you don't mind. Etienne Normandeau, he's--'_

'You're really going to lie to me about this?' Trowa shrugged into his jacket. 'Just tell me you're setting me up, Quat.'

The connection fuzzed over Quatre's grin, pixellating into white and gold. It resolved slowly around Quatre's voice, smugness having no problem transmitting from the colonies. _'You already promised. You better show.'_

'I don't go on blind dates.' He tapped the phone. Loudly. 'I think I might have mentioned that. Before. Multiple times.'

_'Given your robust social life, I can see why your diary would be too full for set-ups.'_

'You suck at sarcasm. I have an appointment. No to Emily or whatever his name is.'

_'Etienne. He's a solicitor. That could come in handy, if your appointment goes the way they usually do.'_

'I don't need a lawyer.' The video came back, just in time to capture Quatre's eyeroll. 'At the moment,' Trowa amended. 'I don't know him. The amount of time it would take me to get to know him is prohibitive to what you want me to do with him.'

_'You have the most thorough vetting process I've ever encountered, and I work in government.'_

'My life could depend on being thorough,' Trowa reminded his friend drily.

_'Because Etienne's a secret assassin?'_

Trowa snorted. 'Maybe. If he was, he'd definitely pretend to be a solicitor.'

Quatre laughed. _'You need drugs.'_

Trowa winked solemnly. 'Got any?'

 _'Yes, right there next to my badge of office._ No, _Trowa, and if anyone monitoring my calls asks me questions, I'm giving them you.'_

He laughed at that, willing to grant Quatre that victory. 'You're cute.'

_'I'm sure my cell mate will agree.'_

'Come on. Guys like you never get convicted.'

_'And yet every time we talk, somehow we end up back at felonious behaviour.'_

'Just one of the many services I provide,' he answered pleasantly. 'I have to go.'

_'Dinner. I'll text the address when I've picked someplace suitably romantic.'_

He rode the lift down to the lobby and exited into the early morning bustle of businessmen departing en masse. He waited patiently for a cab, an eye on his watch as he let a few harried-looking gentlemen rush ahead of him. He relaxed on the long ride, thinking non-thoughts about whether the taxis here were really cleaner than other places he'd visited, and thinking more pointed thoughts about washing just to be sure. He wasn't usually much for germ paranoia, but the time he forgot to be he'd be in trouble.

He paid by credit card to avoid having to figure out currency conversion, and walked up a pleasant avenue lined with palms toward the university. A murmured question to passerby, students with long hair and earbuds who nonetheless stopped politely to listen as he spoke, directed him toward the Faculty of Engineering. It was an attractive white building, tall against the bright blue sky, doors swinging open at a touch. He walked, hands in his pockets, around the main floor, reading the multi-lingual signs and peering up at the skylights overhead. He climbed the broad staircases, leaning out over the ledge to see the arboretum in the centre. Nice.

'Are you a visitor?'

He turned. 'I have an appointment, actually,' he replied. 'I'm a bit early. I'm looking for Doctor Toh Huang-Fu.'

'You must be Juan Munoz.'

'I am.' They shook hands, Trowa adding a bow as an afterthought. 'This is lucky. I'm a little lost. Jet-lag.'

'Please come to my office. Would you like a cup of coffee?' Toh led him around the corner, pausing at a break room with a hot plate percolating an urn. Trowa shook his head amiably. 'I'm afraid I'm still a bit confused by your visit, Mr Munoz. You came a long way to hire an expert in your lawsuit. LymTech couldn't find someone in Argentina to testify about the faults in the programme?'

'My employers want the best. That's what I do.' Trowa took the chair he was offered, watching as Toh closed the door. 'I'm sorry-- the sun's a bit bright. Would you mind if I closed the blinds on your window?'

'Oh, I can get that for you. We catch the worst of the morning, but it will be tolerable in an hour.' Toh dimmed the room and returned to his desk. 'Well, Mr Munoz, I'm flattered, certainly. But I have no direct experience with this programme. I only wrote the original code. I sold it a decade ago. While I was in school here, as it happens.'

'For a pittance,' Trowa said. 'And no royalties on future use. Did you know the start-up who bought your code was bought by the Federated Forces a year after you signed away your rights to it?'

'The Federation?' Toh blinked at him. 'No-- no, I didn't.'

'Ultimately destroyed by Order of the Zodiac, which ultimately surrendered power at the Battle of Libra, and the rights to your code fell to the Interim Parliament, and then to the Earth-Sphere United Nations. Preventers own your code now, technically. More or less legally.'

'I didn't know that.'

'Have you done much? Since you wrote that code in uni?'

Toh inhaled, a frown appearing between his thick brows. Squat little man with a nice enough face, an open face. He looked honest. When he smiled, it reached his eyes. 'There's always tomorrow,' he said diplomatically.

It seemed pretty bitchy to shoot him, following a line like that. Toh rocked in his chair, once, rolling a couple of inches before he snagged and stilled. The silencer left just a little echo, a hollow fwop sound that flattened out to nothing. The hole in Toh's forehead didn't bleed, but the window blinds took the brunt of the splash, shivering with the impact of blood and brain matter.

Trowa checked his watch. When he'd hacked Toh's university account the night before, he'd had no appointments other than Juan Munoz for the morning. Some poor student would discover the body after lunch. Trowa took his time, plugging his phone into Toh's computer, transferring a worm and letting it eat away Toh's files while he searched the desk. Nothing of interest, but Trowa pulled out all the drawers, scattered paper, knocked over a cup of pens with a decorative sprawl. He patted down Toh's torso, removed his mobile and a USB thumb drive. He took both items with him.

He let himself out, closing the door behind him. He took the stairs down to the main floor, to stretch his legs. He squinted up at the bright skylights. It was warming up outside.

 

**

 

'You dumped the phone?' Une asked him.

'At the hotel. I left my favourite underwear for them to find, too.' Trowa overturned a tomato in the crate of vegetables before him. Sunday markets weren't Une's usual choice of low-profile meeting spots, and the jostle of elderly and parents with prams and crying children and hurrying farmer-types was an odd contrast to Une's glacier chill. She got a wide berth, people sliding right around her without looking too closely. Trowa kept getting bumped from behind, and he stood with his teeth set, trying not to think about how he'd left his gun in the car, sure he wouldn't need it here.

'Good work,' Une said then, high praise from a lady who didn't dish it easily. Maybe she appreciated the loss of the undershorts, too. 'The clues will lead back to Juan Munoz, which should trigger them to call Preventers in. The investigation will die once we get it. And, before you ask, I've already taken care of altering the data file. Your fingerprints and DNA will only match Juan Munoz, and only for so long as it takes him to mysteriously disappear. There won't be anything to tie you back to that identity.'

No more than there had been when it had been Randal Garcia, or Victor Reyes, or any of a half dozen identities that had gone the same way. Leaving deliberate evidence was a new tactic, but if she'd meant to burn him, she wouldn't be so obvious about it. 'Why did Preventers want him?' he asked then.

'Bag me some of those brussels sprouts.'

'Sure. Which ones are brussels sprouts?'

Une gave him a long-suffering look. She pointed. Trowa filled a bag with the tiny cabbage heads, choosing the greenest without any idea if that was the right thing to do. He wasn't planning on eating them.

Une paid for her vegetables, cash exchanging hands while the farmer did his best not to quail away from the scary lady holding out money like it might be a ticking bomb. Trowa got the honour of carrying her bags, irritated, on edge. He didn't like the noisy market, didn't like the way Une was dragging this out. 'Acquatics?' he prodded her, when she stopped at the next stall. 'Really?'

'Seafood,' she corrected. 'You should buy something as well. I've seen what you think of as foodstuffs.'

'I eat fine.' He didn't eat anything that smelled like that. 'You didn't answer me.'

'I wasn't planning on it, no.'

'Why?'

Une tucked her hair behind her ear, straightening up. 'The perch, please,' she said, without waiting her turn, and every single person behind the counter dropped what they were doing to serve her.

'You've been here before,' Trowa decided.

'My apartment is around the corner.'

He wondered that she volunteered that so easily. Not for the lack of security, although he was sure there were people who'd be interested in the domicile of the head of Preventers Corps. Just with him.

A paper-wrapped, vaguely squishy bundle of fish went into Trowa's bags, and Une led him through the crowd toward another stall. A gust of breeze caught at her coat, flapping it open. She patted her hair down again, slipping it out of its pins and letting it fall loose. Trowa frowned at her back.

'Would you like a cup of coffee?' she asked him. 'Guatemalan beans here.'

'Sure.' He considered not saying it, the ramifications of giving her an open forum to humiliate him in if he were wrong, and said it anyway. 'Is this about sleeping with me?'

Her face froze for just a second, as she opened her wallet. He'd had it right, then, and she'd kick him out anyway for making her talk about it. She'd never liked having it pointed out, but it was just weird, being invited back to her place, and if this food was like she was going to fucking cook for him, he had no idea--

Une laughed. She actually laughed. Full-throated, helpless laughter. At Trowa.

'It's not--' He was annoyed. 'It's not that weird a question.'

'Oh, Trowa.' She paid for the coffee, two cups. 'I forget sometimes how young you are. What on earth gave you that notion?'

'Never mind.' He refused to be embarrassed about being wrong. He took his damn coffee from the farmer and dumped half the caddy of sugar into it, refusing, too, to so much as glance at her as he confirmed his damn age for her. 'You still haven't answered me. About why Preventers wanted him. He was just a professor.'

Une settled for a swirl of cream in her coffee, and walked. Trowa followed, because that was all he was there to do, and he still had all her bags. They were nearing the end of the market, passing by the bread and the baked goods without stopping, skipping a stall selling homemade soap. 'He authored the code,' Une said.

'He hadn't thought about it in a decade. He wasn't some hacker coming after you.'

'Us. He could have broken open our entire defence mainframe.'

'He wasn't the type.'

'Someone else might have been, and he might have been used without even knowing it.'

So now he was dead. And Preventers would be called in to investigate the hit they'd initiated. 'You could have just hired an assassin,' Trowa said, and didn't care if anyone did overhear them. 'Instead of me. If all you want is people dead, I'm an expensive hire.'

'But you understand the reasons. An assassin does what he's hired to do, but he doesn't care why.' Une was headed for the benches under the trees. A man with a newspaper saw her coming and vacated it, for no other reason than that it looked like the prudent thing to do. Trowa imagined Une didn't even notice the world ordering itself to her wishes, any more. She wanted, and she took. Him, when he'd willingly met her at a hotel, three years ago, and walked out twenty-four hours later with a job.

He sat slowly beside her. 'But you know I don't really believe in all of it,' he said. 'Preventers. The Goal. Peace.'

'Belief is for other people. Better people.' Une sipped her coffee, her eyes on something else, something distant. The future, maybe. The past, probably, and the people who'd died there to get her where she was now. Queen of everything, and most especially of the people who lived, and died, without ever knowing who ordered it.

He was tired, he realised. Singapore had taken more out of him than he'd known.

'Can I crash at your place for a couple of hours?' he said. 'I have to get uptown for dinner later.'

'You're going out to dinner dressed like that?'

'This is how I dress. Your place. Since it's right around the corner.'

She looked at him. Touched him, which was something of a surprise, not a thing she did all that often. The back of her finger brushed over his cheek.

'You missed a spot, shaving,' she informed him, and stood. 'Come in next week. I'll have something for you.'

 

**

 

Even for Quatre, it was a fancy pick. No-one dared to queue outside. There was a valet, doubling as a door guard, and they took their damn time checking Trowa was on the invitee list before they accepted his keys.

He'd never decided if Quatre was making a point, rubbing his face in places like this, or just trying to do him a favour, in a Quatre kind of way. A little spice and culture, a little of that money, since Trowa liked it so much. He'd been the one to put money between them, and knew it, and if Quatre was tone-deaf to the result, it wasn't much his fault. They ate well when they saw each other, and that was rare enough, these days. He'd order a bottle of expensive wine, because Quatre would let him, would expect him to. They'd sit at the best table, on display like a golden idol at a feast, surrounded by people hungrily eying them, wondering how deep the pockets really went.

And probably whoever this Etienne person was would be on the receiving end of some kind of treat or two, a well-placed word, maybe, nothing so crass as a cheque. Quatre's phone list always seemed to be made up of attractive, well-heeled graduate students, apple-cheeked political prodigies with impeccable suits and silly haircuts. Trowa took the dates as the gestures were meant-- a twisted, complicated, possessive and arms-length at once way of dealing with something neither of them knew how to actually end. It was usually good for a couple nights of decent sex, and the inevitable plaintive look from Quat that both thrilled him and made the pit of his belly feel overfull and uneasy.

He'd drunk a beer in the car, just to settle his nerves. He was glad he'd had the foresight, when the maître d'hotel tried to make him wear a tie.

'No,' he said.

'This is a formal establishment,' he was informed, though the lady had the inborn sense to be a shade cautious, eyeing him sideways. 'Appropriate dress is required.'

'No,' he repeated himself, as far as he was willing to engage in that effort, and he bypassed her by pointing toward Quat's table, smack in the middle of the floor, raised on an actual dais. Meat on the altar. 'I'm with Daddy Warbucks.' Quatre waved, helpfully. That ended that.

He had an escort, two penguins who quick-marched him up velvet-carpeted steps to Quatre's table. One whisked his chair out, the other fluttered a fancy napkin at him. Trowa plucked it from her hand. 'Scat,' he told them. 'I can sit on my own power.'

'Be nice,' Quatre chided him. 'You look dapper tonight.'

'Don't lie.' He bent for a dry kiss brushed across Quatre's cheek. Neither of them met the other's eyes. He shrugged out of his leather jacket as he straightened, dropping it carelessly across the back of his chair. 'Introductions?' he asked, pretending to notice the other man waiting for his attention.

And getting a start for his game-playing. It wasn't one of Quatre's hangers-on. It was Duo Maxwell.

'Hey,' Duo said.

'Hi.' He covered his confusion by sitting slowly, the chair between Quatre and Duo, evening out their triangle. He hadn't seen Duo in years, maybe five, and five made a lot of difference. He looked-- he wasn't looking. He was looking at his menu, apparently satisfied with the extent of courtesies, chewing the inside of his cheek as he went back to his decision-making. One bitten nail tapped on the gilt edge of the menu. He was tapping a foot, too, just a steady little rhythm speeding along and shivering the thick oak leg of the table, when Trowa propped his own foot up and felt it. Thick eyebrows, not frowning, not tense, over eyes that were just a little too big for his face, nose just a little too narrow, mouth a little too wide, but the whole was an arresting picture, the kind of face you stopped to stare at.

Apparently. Since he was doing that.

And Quatre was smirking into his waterglass. Clever ducky.

Clever fucking ducky indeed. Set him up with a vengeance. Trowa reached for his own water, crunched ice between his molars. 'How's Etienne?' he asked casually.

'Who?' Quatre brushed that off with a shrug. 'Glad you could come tonight.'

Sometimes it was easy to forget Quatre had a brain behind those big wet eyes. He didn't set out to strategise, and Trowa forgot to expect that he could. That he had no problem dodging left when Trowa expected him to keep on walking right forever. If Etienne had ever even existed, Trowa would eat that beer can sitting on his passenger seat. He'd come in half-asleep, and Quatre had ambushed him. Known exactly how to wake him up.

Trowa opened his menu, and propped it against the table edge. 'You're an asshole.'

Duo looked up, wondering. Quatre blinked those twinkling blue eyes oh so very innocently, and Trowa bit his lip to stop himself from smiling.

'I have no idea what you mean,' Quatre answered brightly. 'The specials tonight are the Orata at Sal and the Beef Cheek Stew.'

It was subtle. Duo's mouth twitched to the side. The tempo of his tapping sped up, relaxed again. Displeasure? Contempt? Maybe just overwhelmed. He wasn't looking around. The restaurant was bright, too bright, candles everywhere throwing off the shadows, and it was loud, people talking, laughing, clinking plateware. Trowa had learnt a long time ago that it was the kind of atmosphere that would always follow Quatre, but Duo might not be used to it. Duo, he noticed, didn't have on a tie, either. The vee neck of his jumper would have been low-cut on a woman, dipping to display a smattering of hair between his pectorals. Five years definitely made a difference. Daring sartorial choice for a Preventer. The braid wasn't entirely serviceable, either, not the way a loose lock clung to his neck, coiling snake-like, inky like a tattoo on all that pale skin.

Yeah. Five years had made a lot of difference there. Yuy hadn't looked like that when Trowa had seen him last.

'Wine?' Quatre asked him, right on cue.

Hell yes. He was just glad to have it already decanted on the table. He accepted a glass from another over-eager waiter without comment. He should have whacked one off in the car, really, he'd be more relaxed now, Singapore and Une burning a hole in his gut that wanted to be filled with some kind of probably dangerous adventure that ended with a bender. Maybe it wasn't too late to backtrack and find out if Etienne was real. Safer, definitely.

He cleared his throat. He had no sense of time since he'd sat down. Seconds? Minutes? He had no idea if it was as awkward as it felt. 'Did he tell you?'

Quatre didn't fill the gap, so Duo looked up. His eyes meeting Trowa's wasn't exactly like lightning striking the sand, but it definitely did something funny to Trowa's lower lap region.

'About the specials?' Duo clarified.

'Yeah, that.' He slouched lower in his chair with the napkin scrunched over his groin. 'I--' Quatre was outright grinning. Fuck him. Trowa raised his menu. Won back his cool by planting his feet flat in the luxurious carpet, splaying his elbows on the table, and knocking a goldware fork to the side. He felt better when he had his own space established. Quat was going to have one more move up his sleeve, and this one would tell him whether Duo was in on it or not. He wasn't getting a clue out of that polite non-expression, didn't want to get caught looking. Not til he was ready again. 'How's the osso bucco here?' he asked, when he saw Quatre make a twich in the direction his belt. Five, four, three, two...

The PDA went off. He hadn't actually seen Quatre touch it, which meant he'd planned a call. Good timing. And he played it like a master, the little sneak. Quatre took it off his belt, glanced at it, and set it down on the table, out of reach. 'Sorry.'

Duo fell for it. That was Quatre's genius; he looked innocent, he didn't do anything but sit there looking sweet and harmless, and people fell for it every time. Duo was the one who said, 'Hey, if you need to answer that...'

'It can wait, we're at dinner. I hate to be so rude, we haven't even ordered.'

'It's fine. We'll just get antipasta to start.'

'Oh, well, it could wait, but if you don't mind-- order something then, anything is fine with me--' Quatre was standing, collecting the PDA, allowing a waiter to jump up and get his chair as if it were the greatest honour he would have all evening, and airily forgetting to look guilty as he abandoned them. The waiters all followed, apparently figuring they didn't need to dance attendance if the money was out of the room. Duo went back to his menu.

Trowa chuckled into his wine. 'Smooth.'

'What?' Duo looked up.

'He's setting us up,' Trowa said, putting it bluntly to watch for the reaction.

Duo blinked. He hunched a shoulder, an automatic little twitch, and glanced into the corners. He did catch himself before he sat forward in his chair. Not in on it. Not comfortable with it.

'You think he's coming back?'

'He promised to treat, so he better.'

'I'll buy and bill him later.'

Duo's mouth did that thing again, cheeks sucking in. His eyes flicked down, skipping past Trowa's chest to his hands. Dropped lower, for just a skittish second. Trowa inhaled, and sipped his wine again.

'So, yeah... they have foie gras.'

Duo, after a moment, actually initiated a sentence. He said, 'I thought you were seeing someone.'

'I was fucking someone,' Trowa told him honestly. 'I was never “seeing someone”.'

'That was couth.'

'Sorry. Are you?'

'Sorry or seeing someone.'

'Seeing someone.'

'I dated someone for a while. It didn't work out.' Duo tapped on his menu. Tap, tap, tap, three times, then a long pause. He put the menu aside. 'Are we making conversation or are we laying the groundwork to flirt?'

'Is there a difference?' Eye contact. He liked that in a man, liked that in Duo it came off as confrontation, not speculation. That hadn't changed, at least. He wanted a fight, suddenly, wanted a battle. An even match and a happy ending. How was that for _understanding the reasons._

'Look,' he said. 'Quatre thinks I'm too lazy to search for a soul mate. You're too smart to start with me. We don't have to play nice just to flatter him.'

'Well. Thanks.' Duo scratched at his neck, those bitten nails leaving red grooves slow to fade. 'I don't want to get in on your shit with him. I mean, anyway, I wouldn't date any of you.'

'Too bad.' With no waiters around, Trowa refilled his wine himself. 'If he'd just told me you were coming, I would have showed up to see it for myself anyway.'

Eye contact. Wavered, but held. 'Well. Thanks.'

'You're blushing,' Trowa observed.

'So?'

'It's cute.'

'I don't want to flirt with you.'

'Okay. So what are you having? For dinner?'

'I don't know.' Duo grabbed at his own glass, twirling it by the stem. It was all open in his face, and yet it wasn't like with Quatre, who wasn't that different, letting every thought show. Duo looked at him, and decided, that was all. 'Maybe I should just go.'

'Why?'

'I feel a little uncomfortable knowing Quatre's going to want a progress report.'

'I don't kiss and tell. Do you?'

'Okay, seriously, I don't want to do the thing, the witty repartee, the-- yeah. We don't really know each other very well. That well.'

'No, we don't. None of us.' It wasn't going to happen. It wasn't going to happen, and he didn't have the energy to turn it around. Etienne Whoever would have been in the bathroom sucking him off by now, and the buzz of a new idea, new challenge was fading. He didn't know if Duo just didn't like him, or had been warned off him by who knew which one of the others, after a comment like that, but the warning was clear, and he didn't think Duo would give him the courtesy of another one.

'Sorry,' he said, meaning it more for himself than for Duo, and definitely not meaning it all for Quatre. 'You know, maybe I'll go. You and Quat belong here. I don't.'

'You don't belong in restaurants? Is this some sort of weird modesty?'

'This place is unreal.' He nodded at a tray going by, loaded up with gleaming white plates of ridiculous food. 'Want to go get a burger and a beer?'

'No, I don't.'

Trowa surrendered. Held up his hands and everything. 'I get it. Look, I'm going to go.' He shoved back his chair and stood, wrenching his jacket onto his shoulders. 'I'm sure he'll come back when he sees me leave.'

'Yeah. It was nice to see you again.'

'No, it wasn't, but it's nice you said so.' Stupid, Trowa told himself, but he said it anyway, and couldn't claim it was the wine. 'Maybe I'll call you.'

Maybe he'd just lasted it out long enough. Maybe Duo was playing hard to get. But Duo smiled at that. Small smile, one half of his mouth turning up, into a dimple. He broke eye contact to hide it, pressing his finger to his lips.

Trowa removed it. He replaced it with his own mouth, sheer impulse. Impulse he never had, never gave into, and fully expected to get shot for, or at the very least shoved into a pile of roast duck. Duo's lips were warm.

Trowa left without looking back. Mostly because it took that amount of concentration not to trip over himself, his pulse and his stomach and his feet all attempting to jump in opposite directions.

Quatre was in the foyer, fending off a crowd of anxious staff by patently keeping his back to them. He wasn't even pretending to play with his PDA, and he looked rather bored, until he spotted Trowa headed toward the grand doors.

'Go have dinner with him,' Trowa told him. 'And next time, let him know what's going down so he can ditch you before it gets uncomfortable.'

Quatre ignored all of that. 'Did it go well?'

'He thinks I'm an ass and he's right, so-- yeah. I think so.' He licked his lips, because he couldn't not. 'I'm-- gonna go.'

Quatre rolled his eyes. 'We'll try again in a week. Trowa-- I was right, wasn't I.' Quatre read it off him, his grin growing wide. 'I was right.'

'You need to stop, Quatre.'

'I don't think I'll have to keep trying now,' Quatre teased him, and turned to give himself over to his adoring fans.

 

**

 

He'd never liked the homecoming part of his 'job' with Preventers. He didn't care about the actual missions they ran him, and whatever Une thought of him, he didn't care much about the reasons for it, either. It was steady money, and good money, and he cared about the security it gave him. He liked less that it came with a contract from Preventers, but he'd had worse taskmasters. His bargain with Une came with a fair amount of personal freedom. More than fair. So far as he knew-- and he made it his personal business to know-- Preventers had never been intrusive in that personal business, had never set up watch on him, had never so much as tracked his spending accounts. If there'd been a background check, it had been done without asking him for the secrets he would have lied about anyway.

And it covered him for what he'd been doing with his time, anyway, which was working his way toward an arrest in a world that was increasingly legitimatised. Interesting to think people he tentatively-- mostly-- thought of as 'friends' were probably the people who would have been responsible for taking him out, if he hadn't taken Une's offer, and it had weighed with him when he'd bargained for terms. Quatre, out there building a name for himself not just as heir to a colonial fortune, but someone to watch in politics. Righting the wrongs of decades, even a century of neglect, some of it benign, most of it deliberate. Quatre wanted a world that was fair, and had a vision of what that looked like, and he would spend his life closing loopholes as fast as Trowa could exploit them, probably never admitting to himself they were working at cross-purposes. Heero Yuy and Chang Wufei, two people Trowa knew without thinking would have his back in an instant in a battle, and knew without thinking would ditch him the second it came to handcuffs, if they caught him with his hand in the till. It wasn't that they weren't capable of living beyond the rules, but they'd been just a little too grateful to turn the reins over to someone else, someone who seemed to have good intentions, who understood how the chess board was supposed to work when you included more on it than Leos and Vayettes and Gundams. They'd joined Preventers because it felt good to act like they were trying, not because they knew what they were doing.

Duo Maxwell. He was a Preventer, too.

He remembered now thinking that was a good look, a good sign, but they'd gone and recruited Chang a few years later and Trowa had shrugged. Then had come Yuy and then had come Trowa himself and he'd only marvelled at Une's reach. She'd never fully defeated them in war, but she'd outlasted them in the aftermath, and it was her world they were living in now, pawns in her game. They'd only been boys, and without their Gundams they didn't have any personal power. Heero's near-superhuman strength didn't add much to everyday living, nor Trowa's athletic ability, nor even Quatre's personal wealth. They'd reverted to just the people they would have been without a war, except for the lingering sheen of what war had made them, names that might still, one day, mean something if anyone got angry enough, restless enough, under the new regime. To most of the Sphere they'd never been more than symbols anyway, weak without the Gundams that made them killers. But still symbols. And Une had learnt all about that from Treize Khushrenada.

So what did it reckon that Duo Maxwell was going home right now, somewhere, part of that.

He had a week of downtime after Singapore, and spent it by seeing Quatre off to the shuttleport, by buying new underwear at a fancy men's department store for no other reason than that he could, by sitting in a park feeding pigeons. By finding Duo Maxwell's address through slightly illegal means and following him home from work. He didn't actually mean to do that-- it was just an interesting exercise, a bit of fun on a day without much structure, following the trolley, then the bus, keeping distance, wondering if Duo had noticed a green sedan always popping up behind him. He entertained himself making guesses what Duo's place would look like, and had settled on condo, first floor, somewhere with trees. He was wrong. High-rise, fourteenth floor, facing a parking garage. Utterly unremarkable. Walking distance from a bustling bit of ethnically mixed downtown, maybe that was the draw; it was more like a colonial city, here, than in the suburban sprawl where houses took up huge amounts of space with yards and personal patches of sky. It pleased him to know something about Duo, and he thought that was probably not a good sign for his self-restraint, of which he was usually well-stocked.

He was the restless one, he thought. The world was getting too settled, and he was getting too settled in it. He'd shot a man in Singapore for no reason. Because Une had given him a name and he'd just done it. He'd do it again in a week.

It wasn't morals, he thought, as he inched his car up the street following Duo from that apartment toward a laundromat. He didn't regret the death, didn't even fundamentally questions Une's version of the necessity of it. Looking at Duo Maxwell's back walking away from him, though, he had the feeling he was missing the part of him that was supposed to.

He ordered takeaway at the Ethiopian restaurant across from Duo's apartment and drove home. He watched a porn on his laptop, and had an unremarkable sort of orgasm, a functional sort of release that allowed him to go to sleep, at least, with the edge off. But he woke at three in the morning, his teeth grinding, and couldn't get his eyes to close again.

 

**

 

He decided in the airport lounge somewhere around his fourth beer, and switched his ticket for California.

He had another two in flight, one to congratulate himself on lasting a full three weeks before giving in, one out of annoyance that he didn't have more than three weeks' worth of resistance in him. Fuck Quatre and his grand ideas. Quatre didn't know what he was starting, and if it ended badly Trowa would get on a shuttle to L4 just to bugger someone, and Quatre had better volunteer or hire him a hooker stat.

He took a taxi from the airport rather than renting a car, relaxing into his buzz and relatively confident that he could produce enough of a trainwreck with this bad idea that he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences until he sobered up. It had the makings of an epic kind of night. He felt tall, he felt strong, he had a duffel bag full of unmarked bills and a ski mask and six Uzis with no serials and airport security had blitheley ignored all of it. It was the kind of night when miracles happened. Miracles like getting laid.

He absolutely did not trip on his own feet getting out of the cab, but he did probably overpay the driver, getting out in front of Duo's building. He lugged his duffel through the lobby past the desk, automatically schooling his face into bored indifference, and went unchallenged. He punched in Duo's floor at the first lift, and closed the doors on a mom approaching with a couple of young kids. Anticipation was a pleasant tingly crawl in his belly. The mirrored walls of the lift were freaking him out. He closed his eyes, but that made him a little motion sick. He probably shouldn't have had the Irritation Beer.

Apartment 1420. No hanging crap, wreaths or anything, not even a mat. Trowa approved. He aimed at the buzzer, hitting it with great concentration. Buzz buzz buzzzzz. He put his ear to the door to listen for Duo's approach. He already knew Duo would be in there. It was after eight and a Tuesday. Duo wouldn't do laundry until Wednesday and he didn't have any open cases still in active investigation.

Footsteps. Trowa straightened.

The viewer darkened momentarily, and then the door opened. Duo. Shirtless. Damp towel over his shoulders.

'Good start,' Trowa told him, and kissed him.

He got as far as a hand splayed wide on Duo's back-- warm and smooth-- and his tongue in Duo's mouth when Duo started to laugh. A string of saliva stretched between them as Duo peeled him off, til Trowa licked it away.

'My technique must suck,' Trowa guessed. 'Gonna ask me in?'

'What the hell are you doing here?'

'I wanted to see you,' he said. Obviously.

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'I don't know. Ask me in.'

Duo immediately put a hand on the doorframe to block him. 'I didn't invite you over in the first place.'

'Oh.' The plan was derailing. He should probably have made an actual plan. 'So I guess that's a dealbreaker. Should've called ahead, huh?'

He hadn't figured out what actually made Duo's sense of humour tick, but he'd hit on it again somehow. 'Did you drive drunk? To a cop's house?'

'Only a little.'

Duo finally cracked a smile for him. 'Come in,' he said, and let Trowa cross the threshhold.

Well, progress was progress. Trowa dropped his duffel with a dull clink by the door, shrugging out of his jacket. Duo helped him with a sleeve he was doing just fine with, but it gave him opportunity to smell Duo's hair, so that was all right. 'Okay,' he said, and blew out a big breath. 'So how are you?'

'All right. You?' Duo left him standing there in the four tiles of 'foyer' and ran Trowa a glass of water out of the galley kitchen five steps to the right.

Trowa drank half of it in one go. 'Thanks.' He finished the rest in smaller gulps, blinking over the rim at Duo's amused little smile. 'Kind of shitty, thanks. Want to go get a burger and a beer?'

'I think we're fine here for the night. It's getting late.' He pointed Trowa at a saggy courduroy couch, behind the cramped little bar area. Not much of an apartment. 'Why so shitty?' he asked then.

'Bad day at the office,' Trowa deadpanned, flopping back into a seat. He left plenty of room for Duo, just in case it needed a hint. 'You know.'

'Where do you work?'

'Yesterday, Rwanda.'

Duo raised both eyebrows at that. 'Seriously?'

'Yeah. Why would I lie?' The couch was maybe more comfortable than it looked. He let his head rest back, then didn't, afraid he'd close his eyes. Duo was putting on a shirt. That was disappointing. The towel went onto the edge of the bar, folded. People folded towels? Trowa rotated the empty glass in his hands, digging a fingernail along a groove in the side. 'Ever been there?'

'No.' Duo took that open spot on the couch, finally, crossing his ankles, one arm along the back cushion. Waiting with polite interest. Trowa didn't know what to make of that. Maybe he'd hallucinated the kiss. Quatre would have been blushing all over the room, painting the place red with shame and stutters. His little intern fuckbuddies would have done something the hell about it by now.

'No loss,' Trowa remembered to say. 'It's a shithole. You really don't care about Rwanda.'

'I don't think I know where it is. Was never very strong on Earth geography.'

'Africa.'

'That's the big one.'

'Yeah. You're humoring me.'

'Yes,' Duo said. 'Do you mind?'

'Nah. Just so you know, you didn't quite pull it off.'

'I'll work on that.'

The fun was beginning to go out of it. But Duo still wasn't tossing him out. He did let his head rest back on the cushion. Soft. 'How many times did he try to get you to go out with me again? Quat?'

From the corners of his eyes he watched Duo consider him. 'He was disappointed,' Duo admitted. 'But he backed off.'

That explained the lack of follow-through. It had been unlike Quatre. 'It would be ironic if we got together without him.'

'Why are you so interested in me?' Duo leant forward, and Trowa sat to attention, alert to the sudden slide in mood toward dangerous. Duo's face was still and intent, his eyes narrow. 'The most we ever saw each other, you were beating the crap out of me in an OZ prison cell. Even if that turned you on, it's been a long time.'

'You're interesting,' Trowa said. Duo's mouth was turned down at the edges. That wasn't enough of an answer, apparently. 'And we have history. I'm comfortable with it.'

'This isn't about Quatre?'

'What? No.'

Duo tapped. Trowa watched his fingers. He said, 'You come on kind of heavy.'

Trowa nodded. With great care, down and up. 'Okay. I'll stop.'

Oddly, his acquiescence seemed to finally earn that embarrassment factor. Duo pinked around the edges, picked at a loose thread on the couch, at the hole in the knee of his jeans. 'Look,' he said, and even his voice softened, falling into a hoarse little rumble that was infinitely better for the way he met Trowa's eyes, straightforward and without apology even as he said he was sorry. 'It's not that I'm not flattered. I just don't-- I just kind of thought I should never-- I don't know.'

'Fuck around with a Gundam pilot?' Trowa shrugged. 'But another cop is okay?'

Duo's chin rose, evaluating. 'Did Quatre tell you about Johnny?'

He might have hesitated too long, deciding which lie would fit best. Duo's eyes were narrowing again. 'Yeah, a little. He didn't say what happened. Are you going to?'

'Yeah.' Duo abandoned the couch and went back to the galley. He slammed the frigerator door against the wall, and Trowa raised some eyebrows of his own. 'We had a little discussion about what I did during the war. He said he could handle it, but he couldn't, so that was that.'

'Fucker,' Trowa said. 'Was he Oz?'

'No.' Duo returned with a bottle of orange juice. He poured into Trowa's glass, and drank the last few swallows straight from the bottle, standing over Trowa on the couch. Trowa pursed his lips at the juice, thinking through the options in front of him.

He settled on the one that made the most sense out of all the pieces Duo had given him. He set the glass aside on the little stand beside the couch, and said, 'I'm sorry. That sucks.'

Duo nodded. 'Yeah, it did.'

'How long ago?'

'About two months now.'

'Ouch.' He made a cautious move forward, based on that success. 'I always thought you were the type who needed someone in your life.'

Nope. 'Excuse me?' Duo said.

'Someone. A boyfriend.'

'Look, Quatre only set us up because we're the only gay people he knows. Don't read a lot into this.'

'Gee, Duo, don't soft-pedal it. Say what you really mean.' Trowa stood, forcing Duo back a step. 'I'll go. Thanks for the drink.'

He'd misread it. Misread Duo. Or it really was a night for miracles. He saw Duo's mouth turn up, that dimple making a split-second appearance, right before Duo put a hand in his hair and kissed him.

It surprised the shit out of him. He just stood there like a dummy for precious seconds of a hella hot kiss, Duo's fingers curving down his nape, tongue probing for entrance at his teeth, hips-- God-- canting up into his. He sucked in oxygen through his nose, and decided he had better help where he could for however long Duo planned on letting him. He grabbed and held-- just in case-- locked Duo's mouth onto his, and pulled him down onto the couch.

There was momentary negotiation for position, Duo straddling him, bony knees to either side of Trowa's hips, Trowa dragging him higher so the pressure of his grinding hit the exact-- right-- spot, and he fought for every inch of skin he could get. Duo's stomach heaved under his hand, and he skimmed higher, finding that trail of hair he'd spied at the restaurant, crinkly warm texture under the pads of his fingers, and... hell, that couldn't possibly be a stud in the left nipple. Duo shivered when he prodded it, and Trowa barely held in a squirm of his own.

'Fuck, you're hot. Shirt. Shirt.'

Duo sat up long enough to pull it off over his head. Nipple stud, check. Tattoos, faint with age, over the heart and on the bicep, tasting like freshly soaped skin when Trowa opened his mouth against him. He caught Duo, wrapped a hand tight around that ink on his arm, and secured one nipple between his teeth, rubbing the other in circles with his thumb. Duo exhaled hard against his hair, chest heaving.

'I don't get it.' Duo yanked him up for a kiss, returning the bite with one of his own, leaving a sting on Trowa's lower lip, then his jaw for good measure. 'Don't get this. If you're fucking with me--'

'If you'd shut the hell up, we could get on with fucking, period.'

Duo laughed. It came out bright, dissolving into a whisper against Trowa's ear. 'Kind of an asshole. I think that's my type.'

Trowa grinned into the arch of his neck. 'Then it's your lucky day.'

'Yeah.' Duo's mouth latched onto the hollow of his throat, sucking hard enough to raise blood. Trowa fought with their jeans; his own opened easily enough, new as they were, but Duo's were older and the zip caught. Duo refused to give up his project, adding to the difficulty. When he finally got the tab yanked down, he almost crowed in triumph. He dove into Duo's undershorts, wrapping a hand around him. It seemed only right that Duo fit absolutely perfectly into his hand.

Duo sat up tall, covered Trowa's hand with his own. Trowa paused, wondering if it was meant to be as intimate as it felt. Duo's eyes looked more purple than blue, gazing down at him low-lidded and heated like that. Duo showed him what he wanted, and Trowa had to bite his own tongue against-- a babble, maybe, something he was never given to, but Duo rising over him like that, commanding every fibre of his attention, seemed to warrant a comment or two.

Duo's hand guided his in a solid grip, a smooth back and forth over the shaft, pressing his thumb into the leaking tip. Trowa wet his lips, and Duo's hard buttocks dug into his lap, pressing down just right. Duo's mouth opened in a slow grin, and he said, 'I hope you don't mind you're a rebound.'

'What--ever you-- want, Duo.'

Duo pried his fingers open. Trowa opened his mouth to protest, but Duo was lifting his hand. He closed his lips about Trowa's thumb, the one with the oily coat of his own pre-come. The swirl of his tongue around the digit was sufficient to short-circuit any further conversation.

'Shit,' Trowa said, and dumped Duo onto his back. He wrenched Duo's jeans down and the underwear with them, getting them far enough down his thighs that Duo's cock bounced free, springing up from a thatch of dark hair that disappeared when Trowa wrapped a hand around it. He enveloped the head with his lips and sucked, and stupid as it was it honestly felt like finally getting a drink of water after parching himself in the desert. Duo had him by the ears, tickling lightly until Trowa fumbled a hand between his legs and shoved a finger into him.

'Ohh, fuck.' Duo hit him in the chest with a knee, but Trowa barely noticed. Duo crammed Trowa's head down on his dick, and Trowa swallowed obediently, though Duo backed off immediately, stroking at Trowa's hair instead. His stomach shuddered in an airless laugh. 'Your technique got better,' Duo breathed.

He pulled away long enough to say, 'Shut up and come for me then, stupid,' then hilted Duo again, cupping his hips for a better angle, opening his throat for it.

So much for the seriousness of the moment. He only made Duo laugh harder, hitching when he probed for Duo's prostate. 'I can't believe... you said that.'

He guessed right on the best way of shutting that noise up. He paused long enough to wet another finger and curved them both to the knuckle into Duo's body, scissoring firmly. Duo went tight and tensed and wrapped a leg around him, threading his hand into Trowa's hair. Trowa made a point of swallowing, but Duo wasn't paying a particular lot of attention at that point.

They lay still together for a minute or two, just breathing, Trowa listening to the scritch of Duo's nails against his scalp. Then Duo's stomach bounced a little under his cheek. One more laugh. 'You on a timetable or something?'

'You were kicking me out,' Trowa said. He shifted to alleviate the dig of Duo's jeans button in his ribcage, but didn't give up the pillow of Duo's belly. 'I figured if I wanted anything, I'd need to rush.'

'I wouldn't kick you out while you're drunk.'

'I'm not that drunk.' He lifted a languid hand and drew aimless patterns on Duo's hipbone, into the hair of his groin. 'Ask me to stay the night.'

'You were already staying the night. I told you, you shouldn't have been driving drunk.' Duo reached for his shirt, crumpled on the floor, and jokingly swiped Trowa's mouth with the hem.

'I didn't spill.' Trowa propped himself up on an elbow. He kissed Duo, long and thorough, ignoring the slight soreness of a stretched jaw. Worth every ache. And rewarded with a hard glow of approval from Duo, who flicked a lick across his lip and bit the tip of his nose.

'You've got a great mouth. Lips.'

'You too.' He dragged his tongue over them, first the upper, then the lower, slow as torture, and fed his tongue into Duo's mouth for a leisurely spar with Duo's tongue. He settled back into comfort against Duo's chest. 'I always thought that.'

'I'm sure it was pertinent, those long lonely nights before now.'

'Yeah.' He smiled for that. Scratched at his underwear, decided it wasn't urgent enough to fight the drag of his eyelids. He was tired, and Duo was probably right about the drunk. 'So are we going to bed?'

'You're on it.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'I sleep on the couch.'

'Why?'

'Why not?'

'Do you have a bed?'

'No.'

'Why in hell not?'

'I never had one before. I didn't see a reason for it.'

Trowa could have had himself a bed in a hotel room. If he'd got a hotel and then picked up Duo they could have done this on a fluffy pillowtop mattress with a big fat eiderdown duvet. That would have been the benefit of premeditation. 'Because it feels good?'

'I like my couch.'

Trowa knocked his elbow on the cushion bulging out against his back. 'Kind of small.'

'Not usually,' Duo pointed out.

'You sleep with your cop on this couch?'

Duo looked down at him, piqued at that. 'He's not my cop anymore, so what's it matter?'

'Are you still his?'

'Meaning do I still have feelings for him?'

'Yeah.'

'Sure I do. Rage is pretty prominent.'

That had the nice tart ring of honesty. Anyway, his head was spinning, just a little, and he was sleepy. 'Next time you come to me, okay,' he said, and used the last of his mental acuity to strip his own shirt. And wrap his arms back around Duo. Just in case.

Duo didn't appear to be going anywhere, though. He pulled down the light quilt from the back of the couch, and draped it over Trowa's shoulders. It felt like scratchy wool, but it cut the flow of cool air across his skin. The last bit of squirming produced a shoe-- Trowa's. Duo hurled it at the wall. It hit the switchplate, and the overhead light went off, plunging them into darkness.

'Nice aim,' Trowa mumbled into Duo's navel.

'Practice.'

'Fine, be quiet now.'

Duo maybe didn't believe him, if that was what the searching hand down his backside was about, but it was really too much effort, and there was always tomorrow. Duo gave up in short order. 'You always like this?' he asked, his voice sounding deep and floaty above Trowa's head.

Trowa yawned. 'Like what?'

'I don't know. Intense.'

'I never thought so,' he replied, puzzling that out. 'I'm not that complicated, Duo.'

'Okay.'

Intense. Not a word that came up much. Cold, he got cold frequently enough. Distant. Flat. Intense was new, even with Quatre.

'I feel like maybe I should be clear,' Duo added. 'This was great, but it's just sex.'

'Yeah, okay. Anything else?'

'No.'

'Okay, then, go to sleep.'

'Yeah.' Duo stroked his hair, and then his hand stilled. 'Good night. I guess.'

 

**

 

He woke with a crick in his neck, face down in a cushion that usually held someone's ass.

Duo Maxwell's ass. Since he appeared to be in Duo Maxwell's apartment still.

He had a stale morning-after taste in his mouth. Lines from the courduroy imprinted on his cheek. And he had to piss.

'Bath is that door there,' a voice from the fuzzy dim over to his left said. Trowa labouriously rolled his head. Duo, in the galley kitchen. 'I put out a toothbrush for you.'

'Um.' He coughed to clear his throat, and sat up cautiously. His clothes had been laid out on the arm of the couch for him, shirt folded next to his socks, shoes stacked neatly below. 'Thanks,' he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

'Sure.'

His eyes had cleared by the time he splashed hot water on his face, used a slop of paste to clean his teeth. He looked ragged in the mirror, but it hadn't been that much alcohol. It was more like Rwanda, Singapore-- Hungary, Tunsia, L1, South Africa--

He thought about Duo laughing, and looked at himself in the mirror looking half dead, and thought he'd probably made a bad decision last night.

He put on his shirt as he emerged, running a hand through wet hair to keep it off his face. 'Hey,' he said.

'Morning.' Duo faced him over the bar of the galley. He was dressed, different clothes from the night before, a pair of earbuds dangling from his neck. 'Do you eat, or are you one of those guys.'

'I eat.'

'I ask, cause you're thin, and kind of pale.'

'Yeah, well, Rwanda wasn't a party.' He propped his elbows on the bar and peered over it, but couldn’t identify anything that looked like it made caffeine. 'Got coffee?'

'No.' Duo was cooking on the stove. He snapped his wrist, and something yellow flipped over in the pan with a sizzle. 'There's some tea.'

'Okay.' It wasn’t, but he could live til he got home. Duo didn’t bother to direct him to mugs, so Trowa took that as permission to search the cupboards, trying to decide if Duo wasn't really a morning person, or was just trying to be annoying. He found handle-less ceramic things that were square, not round, and didn’t bother to look further. There were no bags either, just loose tea in some kind of bamboo box, so Trowa just gave up and sat on a bar stool holding the square mug and wishing it had coffee in it. 'So,' he said. 'How long have you lived here?'

'I dunno, five years? Maybe six.'

'You're kidding.'

Duo ate a green thing from the cutting board and turned to look at him. Hot in the morning, too, Trowa thought lazily. 'Why?' Duo asked.

'It's pretty bare.' He sipped from the cup, purely out of habit, before remembering it was empty.

Duo grinned a little at him. 'That's just how I live.' He made a plate of the steaming yellow stuff and started adding things artistically around the sides of the dish. When it landed in front of Trowa, he made an effort to look at it without crossing his eyes, but it was hard. 'I never saw the point in lots of clutter.'

'That makes sense. Thanks.' Egg beaters, if that offensive carton on the counter wasn’t a mirage. And that wasn’t real bacon. Trowa poked it carefully, sincerely relieved when it didn’t poke back. Another glass of juice. Duo turned off the stove and joined him on the spare barstool, chewing on green pepper. There were weird-shaped tomatoes in the egg beaters, and cucumbers, raw and just chopped up like he was supposed to eat them. 'Are you kind of a health freak?'

'I don’t like to fill up on crap.' Duo licked his fingers. 'I don’t mean to rush you, but I have to go to work soon. If you want to shower–'

'I’ll shower at--' He didn't have a hotel yet. He'd have to get a hotel. Trowa picked up the fork, laid out on a paper napkin like they were in a restaurant or something, and cut a slice of the eggs. 'So you want to meet for lunch?'

'I can’t.'

'Okay. Dinner?'

'I can’t.' Duo put his elbows on the bar. 'Look, last night was a lot of fun. I feel a little bad about not returning the blow job, but you kind of went to sleep right away and– yeah. But this was really poorly timed, so I’ll just have to apologise.'

Trowa swallowed the eggs and put his fork down. 'Are you breaking up with me?'

'I have to leave for a while.'

That hadn't been in his file. If it was a ditch, it was a mean one, and Duo didn't strike him as mean. Trowa picked up the bacon, gingerly. It broke in half when he played with it. 'Where you going?'

'On a job.' Duo drank out of Trowa’s juice, then stood up. 'For a while.'

'How long is a while, and do I have to beat you to get you to talk faster?'

'Five weeks on the inside, and three months on the out.' Duo rinsed the pan and the cutting board, and put them in an drying rack beside his sink. 'Sorry. Probably I should have told you before we exchanged fluids.'

'I do feel a little used.' Five weeks. So much for getting a hotel in the city. And-- Duo had had plenty of opportunity to tell him last night, and hadn't. He was a bit offended, for a minute, but looked at the curve of Duo's spine in the soft cotton of his running shirt and the way his jeans sat low on his hips, and chose to laugh about it instead. On the inside, just so Duo wouldn't know he'd won. Because he hadn't-- because they weren't done playing, even if Duo thought they were.

'Yeah, okay,' he said. 'Call me when you're back if you want.'

'Cool.' Duo gave him a somewhat distant smile over one shoulder, one eye already on the clock.

'Just one thing.'

'Yeah, sure.'

He caged Duo in against the oven, snagged his fingers in Duo's belt loops, and pulled him in. He bent his head for Duo's mouth, and stopped just a millimetre shy. He waited just long enough to feel Duo respond, heartbeat quickening, breath going shallow, eyes dilating. Then he pressed their lips together, slowly, deeply. Intensely.

'Okay,' he murmured, brushing a promise down Duo's throat. 'You can go now.'

Duo blinked at him, unwillingly impressed. 'You really are something, you know.'

'I do know.'

Duo traced a line down the centre of Trowa's chest, raising goosebumps even through his shirt. 'Hey-- take that bag full of guns and money with you. Whatever weird shit you're into isn't my business.'

'I wouldn't bring my weird shit to your door. You can trust me at least as far as you can see my hands.' He stroked the collar of Duo's shirt, and let go. 'Call me,' he said. Not asked.

And Duo grinned at him. 'Why not.'


	7. Trowa - Two

'Pass the--' Quatre leant over him, searching the tray with little shooing movements of his chopsticks. 'Is there any saba left?'

Trowa found it on the other tray. 'You want soy sauce?'

'No.' Quatre propped a foot on the edge of his desk, toes wiggling in merino wool stockings. 'So where were you this time? I can't keep track of you anymore.'

'Checking in with a client in Rio de Janeiro.' Trowa sipped their sake. 'One of the good trips. He gave me a gift set.'

'Fancy. Anything good?'

'Yeah.' Trowa met Quatre's eyes with his mildest smile. 'A fifteen piece dildo set, a full range of smutty movies, and something called The Octopussy.' Quatre blushed exactly the same shade of pink as his shirt, and Trowa rewarded himself a bite of buttery hamachi. 'He runs a porn production company. A successful one, apparently.'

'What could you possibly be doing for a man like that? Do I even want to know?'

'Not nearly as shady as anything you're imagining. Background checks on some of his local reps. That kind of thing.'

'Your life is certainly interesting, I'll grant you that.' Quatre buried his nose in tea, and Trowa let him have that, satisfied with the win. He shared the last two slices of eel, and they chewed in agreeable silence. The noise outside Quatre's office was dying down as his staff scattered for their own dinner hour. Work would resume for most of them, probably, well into the night; at least Quatre would be staying, he was sure, judging by the pile of paper that accumulated beside the computer with reminder notes ready for the pen of the man sitting behind the desk.

'You headed back to Earth after this?' Quatre asked then. 'California, perhaps?'

'I thought Duo told you to back off.'

'He did.' Quatre arched an eyebrow at him, blondly. 'You'd only know that if you didn't back off, though.'

'Don't act like you've cleverly ferreted out a secret.' All the good sushi was eaten already, so Trowa retaliated by stealing a file off the desk and reading it ostentatiously. 'He told you I went to see him?'

'No, he didn't. I know you, is all.'

'Look, it's not up to you to set me up, Quat. I'm fine.'

'I shouldn't have tried to surprise you. Or him. I'm reliably informed I made it worse.' Quatre was watching him when Trowa looked up. He made an effort to actually decipher the report he'd pulled into his lap, but it looked like nothing more exciting than statistics on non-marketable treasuries. He tossed it back in disgust. Quatre straightened it automatically, lining it up along the edge. 'So... going to forgive me?'

'Maybe.' Quatre made big eyes at him. 'You meant well.'

'I did. And, I swear, one of these days I really will learn that I shouldn't mistake good intentions for good ideas.'

Quatre had been Vice Foreign Minister for almost a full year. That was probably a lesson getting actual reinforcement, for once. In Trowa's experience there was nothing like politics to flatten the idealism out of a man. 'You think too much,' Trowa told him, and took the rest of the fried seaweed, since Quatre was too slow to get to it. 'I could like Duo. You were right as far as that went. And he's fuckable, but he can't stand me and he doesn't trust me. Not a great foundation.'

'He just doesn't know you,' Quatre answered immediately, a kind defence of Trowa's mysterious better urges.

'You can stop sucking up any time now. I forgive you.'

'I'm not sucking up.' Liar. Getting better at it, in this job, except for how he gave himself away by grinning through it. Since Trowa had had the last of the seaweed, Quatre got the last of the rice. 'Sorry, I'm starving, I haven't eaten since breakfast. You two didn't exchange words, did you? You're not plotting revenge over a bad date?'

'Haven't given him a thought,' Trowa said. 'I'm cool with it, Quat. So what's going on you aren't you eating?'

'We practically had to separate the ambassadors from L2 and L3 today. They almost had a fight on the Senate floor. And Kingston's an eighty year old man.'

'What are they fighting about now?' Trowa nudged the udon toward Quatre's elbow.

'Thanks. It's the same tired issue. Tariffs. I don't know how anyone can get that excited about trade.' Quatre caught his tongue between his teeth as he wrapped noodles about his chopsticks. He abandoned it quickly, using his fingers with a slurp. Trowa smiled.

'It's not about trade. It's about turf. It's always about turf.'

'At least it's more exciting than differential currencies.' Quat licked his thumb. 'So how about you? How was your day?'

'I'm between jobs. It doesn't suck to have a break.'

'That was pretty general. What did you do today?'

'You mean besides visit you?'

'Yeees.'

'Ran a couple miles this morning. Read the paper. Emails. Pretty boring stuff, Quatre.'

'Well, it sounds pretty wonderful to me.'

The impulse was just suddenly there. Not because he was horny; he was, the visit to Duo itching the back of his brain like ants crawling on him. But because it was Quatre, and he'd strenuously avoided this very kind of thing when they'd actually been fucking, the domestic moments, the banal chatter, the meaningless things adults did with their time that had never held any interest for him. He still strenuously avoided it, for the most part, but Quatre with his braces and his tie hanging undone down his chest and that cowlick flopping just right over his forehead, framed by the open window behind him overlooking the green garden of L1's Parliament House offices-- there was a rightness to the moment, and those ants crawling through the maze of his mysterious better urges tripped a misfire. He leant forward, elbow on the desktop, and kissed the man.

'Stop,' Quatre whispered, and turned his head away.

'Yeah.' Trowa resumed his seat. He picked up his chopsticks, and ate the last piece of salmon.

Quatre's adam's apple bobbed in a swallow. Eyelashes quivered, those long eyelashes that caught the light and hid his eyes when he looked down. He didn't say anything, didn't do anything about it, didn't throw Trowa out or even politely suggest maybe it was time to move along. Just set him up on dates with Duo fucking Maxwell, and Trowa honestly didn't know if he could answer Duo's question any better now than he had before. Duo was nice enough. Duo was sexy and they'd have fun, if Duo let them. But Duo wasn't Quatre, and that was the only real reason to get interested. For all three of them.

Trowa finished his sake, and dropped the paper cup into the trash. 'I need money,' he said.

A little crease between Quatre's brows smoothed out, replaced by matching frowns to either side of his mouth. He didn't say no. He just reached for his chequebook. 'Are you in trouble?' he asked quietly, as he signed his name to it. He didn't mark the amount, and he didn't leave himself a receipt. The tear of paper seemed unnaturally loud, as he handed it over.

Trowa folded it very precisely in half. 'Not for me. Directly. I need to grease some wheels.'

'You're not looking into Duo?'

He set his tongue against his teeth, the fine line between truth and lie. 'No more than usual. That's not what it's for, anyway.'

'Don't trip up over Preventers.'

'I haven't yet.' He slipped the cheque into a pocket, and paused on that. 'What's that mean, trip over Preventers.'

'It means what it means.' Quatre inhaled, began to clean up their supper. 'You know we're watched. Who else but them would do the watching? I worry one day they'll come after you, if you dip into files you're not meant to see, bribe the wrong man. Hire on with the wrong pornographer.'

They'd never specified exactly how much Quatre guessed about what he did, but Quatre was smart enough. And Trowa had never lied-- much-- about the extent of it, except to protect the innocent. He took Quatre's money not because he needed it, these days, with Preventers largely footing the bill, but because it covered his tracks when clients went looking into his background, and it looked suitably corrupt. Quatre gave him the blank cheques not because he approved, but probably because he didn't; because he probably did worry, even if he refused to do anything about a decision Trowa had made for himself. And if you were trying to protect someone you thought was putting himself in danger, putting the name Winner on a transaction offered just a little edge to the proceedings. Even against Preventers.

Damn. He could see the whole chess board, suddenly, and marvelled a little at Quat, who could be hard when he needed to be. Not just moving the money to protect Trowa when the forensic accountants inevitably came calling. Putting Duo in his path because Duo was a Preventer. Duo would lend him a little sheen of legality, wouldn't he, would shine a bit of that do-gooder halo on him. And maybe because Trowa would be in a position to help, with his secrets and his connections, if Preventers ever turned on them. It wouldn't be the first time in history when a fast get-away and a safe house off the grid would come in handy.

He didn't stay much longer. Quatre had calls going to voicemail while they sat, and before long someone came knocking for his attention. He zipped up his coat to his chin as he walked out. It wasn't quite armour, but it helped the taut vulnerable feeling between his shoulderblades.

**

He flew back to California. He did happen to be between jobs. Even if that was because he'd declined to take one that would put him in China when Duo was supposed to be getting back from his assignment.

The residential hotel was okay, in that it at least had a bed as well as a couch. Trowa stocked it with beer and got no farther with that effort, preferring to eat out his meals rather than figure out how to cook. He happened to prefer the take away places by Duo's apartment. No especial reason.

Five weeks passed by. So did six. Seven.

He did take a job, finally, to stop Une from looking into his reasons for being in California right down the road from Preventers Headquarters. It went longer than he liked, though considerably shorter than normal, and he rushed more than was technically bright, with guns involved. Still, he made it back to San Francisco in time to sit chewing his fingernails. No calls from Duo. He checked Duo's apartment-- surveilled, technically-- but there was no sign of life there.

Eleven weeks. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe Duo really didn't want to see him again and was letting him down gently. Or maybe it was always going to be an ass-ache, trying to match their schedules, and he should consider that, if he wanted to be involved. He was by no means sure he did want. 'Involved' was a level of-- effort, investment, emotional reserve he'd never really had. Hell, they were half a date and a blow job into whatever this was and he was already annoyed.

But it was too much trouble to change hotels, so he didn't bother to take out the alarming number of garbage bags he was building up by the door, or return the rental car that was pretty much a lease at this point. He'd been tired, anyway. It wasn't quite a vacation, but it wasn't not, either, so he let himself be lazy, sitting around in his shorts and watching a lot of late-night television and absolutely not counting the days anymore, because that was stupid. Duo would call if he called and Trowa would be available or not.

**

As it was, the call clocked in at fourteen weeks. And Trowa didn't quite dive across the room to grab his mobile, but he did stand there locked in indecision for a full three rings, thumb hovering over the 'receive' button, mouth dry.

He punched it just before it would have gone to voicemail, and put it to his ear with a cough to clear his throat. 'Barton,' he said, and immediately wished he'd gone with something more casual, then second-guessed the second-guess and went with it. 'Go ahead.'

 _'Oh.'_ He listened to the slow inhale, exhale on the other end of the line, over the pounding of his pulse remembering to stabilise. _'It's Duo. Me. Hey.'_

'Oh. Hey.' He pushed a pair of dirty jeans off the bed and sat in their place. 'Hey. Welcome back.'

'Yeah.' There was a pause, a long one, and then Duo laughed at that. It maybe, possibly, did funny things to Trowa's gut, putting lie to the last few rounds of telling himself he'd blow Duo off when they finally did talk. _'How's it going?'_ Duo asked him.

'It's going. You?'

_'Yeah. It's going.'_

Silence. Trowa wet his lips. He didn't have enough experience at small talk; Quatre would have jogged it forward gamely, but-- the hell, anyway. He knew what he wanted, and it wasn't talk. He said, 'Come over.'

Inhale, exhale. Sharper this time. _'You're in Cali?'_

'Yeah.' No way to explain that one. He didn't try. 'I'm local. I have a hotel.'

_'Actually-- want to get that burger and beer?'_

'Yeah, sure. I'll pick you up.'

 _'Okay.'_ That sounded, just maybe, like a small smile in Duo's voice. A tiny little tease. _'I guess you know where my place is.'_

'I think I remember. Yeah.'

_'Okay.'_

Little shit. Duo hung up on him.

It took him half an hour. He had sweaty palms, like some kind of lovesick teenager, when he parallel parked outside Duo's building in the spot he'd informally claimed as his and slipped a couple of coins into the meter. He wiped his hands, repeatedly, on his jeans as he rode the lift up to the fourteenth floor.

Duo opened the door immediately after he rang the bell. 'Hi,' Trowa said, and clicked his teeth together with a slam. 'Okay. What the hell happened to you?'

The lip was the worst, the split still red and sore-looking. The bruises on the cheek and hiding under the straggle of hair on his forehead were that shade of fading green that meant healing was well underway, but they'd probably been something to look at when they'd been fresh. He didn't even spot the cast on the arm right away, tucked into a sleeve.

Duo was all bright smile though, putting him on. 'I really want red meat,' was all he said. 'I mean big honkin burger with cheese.'

'In a minute.' He had to close his fists to get the feeling of violence out of them. Fourteen weeks. Okay. He lifted the hair off Duo's face, and Duo stilled for it, grim and locked down, jaw flexing. Trowa didn't start the fight that hovered between them, though. He just leant down, and kissed the almost-gone bruises, pressing his lips gently to skin that felt overheated and tender. The same to the faint cut on the cheekbone, the bump on the bridge of the nose. The split lip last, careful not to hurt. He trailed his fingers down Duo's arm, finding the rim of the cast above Duo's elbow and following it down his forearm, his wrist, over a cottony puff to swollen fingers. With raw knuckles. Evidence he'd given as good as he'd got. Trowa raised them to his mouth, to his lips. 'Burger. Let's go.'

'Yeah.' Duo was husky, shivering a little when Trowa nuzzled down his neck. 'Hungry.'

'Really?' No problem dressing himself. Those trousers were tight enough to need two hands getting on. Trowa ran his hand inside the halves of Duo's coat, sliding his palm over a sweater that felt like cashmere.

'God.' Duo blew out a breath. 'I think maybe we ought to have some kind of food barrier between bouts of sex.'

'Food first.' He caressed Duo's hard belly, and stepped back. 'Sex later.'

'Yeah.' Duo followed him down the hall, staying two steps back. Trowa slowed, just to be sure. He chuckled to himself, and walked ahead without looking back.

He drove, given Duo was casted, and because Duo didn't fight him on the question. What he didn't leave open for question was the destination. He drove past an _In and Out Burger_ , the strip mall with the eateries, the grocery. He hit the highway, and took the ramp. When they'd gone almost twenty minutes and most of the way to his hotel in silence, Duo turned his face to the dash. He said, 'We coulda stayed at my place for this.'

'You can't cook and you don't have a bed.'

'I can so cook.'

Not if that soy crap was any indication. But all he said was, 'Not in a cast. Let me take care of you for a few days.'

He could actually feel it, the physical bone-grinding effort Duo put into suppressing need. He didn't let himself look, didn't disturb so much as the tension in the air. Duo tamped it down, held it in. He'd known what he was asking when he called.

'When'd you get back?' Trowa asked, when he spotted his exit for his hotel. He pulled a right, toward the offramp.

'About two weeks.'

He didn't answer for a few minutes, picking his way to a response that wouldn't start something unnecessarily. 'You were in a big-ass rush to see me, huh.'

Duo cocked a shoulder. 'I'm sorry.'

He cracked a smile for that. 'No, you're not. You don't have to be.' The hotel was right off the highway, just past the first light. Trowa slid through a red and into the lot. He found a spot near the back, away from the rest of the cars. They could walk a little.

'I am sorry,' Duo said. 'I'm sorry for the way I've handled this... stuff with us.'

'You handled it fine. Don't brood so much.' He put the car in park, turned it off. Duo didn't move, so he didn't move. 'I was in Algiers anyway,' he said, to fill the quiet.

Duo blinked once. 'Where the fuck is Algiers?'

'Africa. Hot there.'

'Why are you always in strange places?'

'Hell if I know.' He opened his door and slid out, pulling Duo across the bench after him. Duo was nimble enough to make light work out of it, short enough to cant his knees out of the way of the pedals and the gearshift. Trowa lent a little manly strength to lever him out the door. Duo let him, let himself be hauled up and under Trowa's arm, onto his hip. 'First floor,' Trowa told him. 'By the pool.'

'You lookin' to run?'

'Only when I have to.' They used the outside entrance, not the lobby, the back hall that was only a few steps from Trowa's door. He inserted his keycard and waited for the green light, patient only because Duo was a warm weight against him, smelling like soap and something that might have been sandalwood. He jiggled the key, let it go to red, just so he'd have to set it again. Duo was tolerant.

Once inside, he dropped their coats onto the floor of the coat closet. 'You want a beer?'

'Please.' Duo didn't follow him into the kitchenette. There wasn't much to look at on the walls, ugly art, a big plastic clock shaped like a cable car. Duo stood frowning at it until Trowa returned with the beers.

'All the glasses are dirty,' he said, handing over a bottle. 'Sorry.'

'It's cool. You weren't expecting me.'

There might be some work ahead of them setting expectations about cleanliness, but Trowa let it go for the moment. Trowa cleared a couple of plates off the couch and sat. Duo stood there sipping the beer, flexing the hand in the cast.

'You're nervous,' Trowa realised.

Duo laughed. 'Yeah. So? You're Mister Grace Under Pressure.'

'Most of the time. Not when Quatre's got plans for me though. Usually that means trouble.'

'About that.' Duo turned to face him head-on. 'I didn't know. That he was planning anything. I wouldn't have gone.' Duo put the bottle to his mouth, and stopped. It lowered. 'I mean, I didn't want to lead you on. I wouldn't have wanted. Something.'

'Something?'

'I don't know. I'm not feeling very articulate.'

Trowa drank half his beer in slow swallows. 'Why'd you come here?'

'You drove.'

'Very funny.' It was happening again. The mood was changing. He didn't know how Duo did that, why he did that. He looked away, looked at the clock. It was six in the evening. Here he was in the dinner hour again, conversating. It was getting to be a habit.

Duo sat, folding himself down onto the couch with a soft creak of his jeans. He fiddled with the beer, peeling the label with a broken nail off the bad hand. 'I know this is annoying, but before I answer, can I ask you something first?'

'Sure.'

'If you didn't know Quatre was going to try to set us up, why'd you jump at the idea so much? Why'd you come to my place after that?'

'I don't know. It just felt right. I wanted to see you again.' He shrugged. 'I didn't give it a lot of thought.'

'Oh.' Duo drank.

'What did you want to hear, Duo?'

'It wasn't multiple choice. Like I said, just whatever thoughts you'd had.'

'Okay, what did you expect to hear?'

'Nothing, man.' Duo finished the beer. 'What is this, a ninety-minute IPA?'

'Yeah. Want another one?' He rose, then changed his mind, and let himself sink back into the cushion. He tilted Duo's face up and kissed him, quick and hard. Then he rose and went to get the beer.

Duo was smiling when he returned. It wasn't a very nice smile, but it didn't seem aimed at Trowa. 'What?' Trowa asked him, handing over the bottle and resuming his seat. 'You okay? Am I okay?'

'I don't know.' Duo dropped his head back on the cushion behind him, stared up at the bland hotel ceiling. 'I wanted to say, you know, sorry. About last time. I'm not too proud of how I handled you showing up.'

'You already said sorry. Forget it. It wasn't a big thing.'

'It was.'

He didn't know what to make of that. There were no clues on Duo's face, nothing he could read. Emotion, definitely, dark emotion, but he didn't know what any of it meant. 'Okay,' he said, at a loss for more. 'So... I answered your question. Your turn now. Why did you come here?'

Duo rubbed his chin on his sleeve. Rubbed his nose, and grimaced at the bruise. He put his boot up on the coffee table, all fidgets that just filled the thinking time, like the movement of his eyes, roaming, eating up the suite, returning to Trowa with a sudden snap. Duo said, 'Do you remember, like, six years ago, we were all hanging around Quatre's family's place in Switzerland? Some holiday or something.'

He knew exactly the trip Duo referred to. It had been hellish. 'Vaguely,' he muttered, and took a gulp of the beer.

'Yeah, I mean, nothing big happened. Not really.' Duo looked at him, that keen searching look that didn't seem to be finding what it wanted. That smile. 'I just remember that I was thinking... I was starting to think that we were all gonna start hooking up, you know? Going through that narcissistic bullshit about “we're the only ones who understand each other”, that kind of crap that just leads to disaster.'

'Does this mean you want to hook up with someone else?' Trowa asked, confused.

'It means I was so convinced it would be really bad for all of us if any of us did that. I wasn't even sure we'd all stay friends. Or that we'd ever been friends to begin with.'

He had those days himself. A lot. 'That doesn't really answer the question though, does it? You came here. If you thought that was a bad idea, it makes you either a masochist or an idiot.'

Duo sat forward, resting his broken arm on his knee. 'I guess I'm saying that I get tired of... I don't-- of apologising. For expecting people to understand things, when I've been telling myself all this time that they didn't need to.'

'People are stupid,' Trowa said. 'And most of us don't bother doing what it takes to understand.'

'Yeah. I guess so.'

Maybe including Trowa. He didn't understand, at this moment, and that threw several other moments into doubt. 'Sorry to disappoint you,' he apologised. Pre-apologised.

Duo gave a despondent shake of the head. 'You don't. You haven't. You could even call it a pleasant surprise.'

'Huh. Okay.' Trowa ran his tongue over his teeth, hesitating. He didn't hesitate, as a rule. He didn't know what to do with all the pregnant pauses. He rubbed his tongue sore on an eyetooth, and made a decision just to make a damn decision already. He tapped Duo's cast, getting a dull thunk. 'So what's the story behind this?'

Whether he'd gone right or wrong, he didn't know, but it cut the gloom. Duo flopped backward, boneless suddenly, if not exactly relaxed. Chin to his chest, he slugged at his beer, and shrugged. 'I got made. The guy who introduced me into the gang got made, actually, so me next. At least I never made it into the Bay.'

'But the other guy did?'

'I didn't know him very well. So I tell myself I don't feel responsible for him.' Duo rolled weary, amused eyes at him. 'It's just that they're all such babies.'

Trowa quirked a smile at him. 'So are you. Twenty-five isn't ancient. The average agent is probably ten years older than you. Fifteen.'

'I feel ancient around them,' Duo muttered into his bottle. 'It's a game to them. You learn the rules and you'll do fine, that's what they teach at the Academy. You never went, but, man, you'd laugh. They teach acting.'

He did laugh for that. He could see Une getting that in the suggestion box. It had the smack of Oz all over it, the Specials doing their Specialness so very obviously it was a wonder they didn't blind each other with it. 'Which method?'

'Oh, hell if I know. Acting.' Duo drank, and, that abruptly, the mood was back. His face got hollow and cold. He said, 'I'm tired of apologising for not being like them.'

Trowa put his beer to his lips, only to discover it had gone empty. He set it aside on the coffee table. Duo followed his hands. 'So, how'd you manage not to end up in the Bay?'

Duo glanced away. Then looked back, locked eyes with Trowa. 'I did what any of us would have done if it was falling down around our ears. I took care of it.'

Yeah. He believed that.

He took a short breath. 'You hate it.'

'No.' Duo pushed to his feet. Trowa watched him go. His pace was jerky, pissed off. He wasn't watching where he was going, avoiding obstacles in his path only by instinct. 'No, you know what I hate? I hate having to clean up after them. I hate having to write endless reports explaining what they did wrong. I hate having to convince them that they're doing it wrong from the start, from the way they're even thinking about it, because they're all fucking ex-military. They treat every case like a target annihilation, screw our actual mission statement, which I don't think any of them have read, assuming any of them can read. And-- fuck's sake, we beat them! We wiped the fucking floor with them and they're trying to tell me how to fight a war."

'So quit,' Trowa suggested. 'Walk away and live healthy. Sleep nights. Leave the fighting to the assholes who think they're so fucking good at it.'

Duo came to a halt at the wall, flipped himself and put his shoulders to it. His smile was all teeth, the nastiest yet, and the most irresistible thing Trowa had ever seen. 'I still want to win,' he said.

Duo had left a third of his bottle. Trowa drained it, coughed into his elbow. 'You, uh, need another?'

'Yeah, but then I'll have to pee, and that's awkward these days.'

He didn't totally have it together, and that was entirely Duo's fault, standing there splayed on the wall like that. He said something stupid like, 'A real friend would give a guy a hand,' and winced, and then tried to pretend he hadn't said anything at all, squinting up at the ceiling. It didn't help much.

Duo began to laugh. 'Dude, I don't know if that's a turn-on or a turn-off.'

Oh, hell. If there was no way out, you went further in. He put on a brave face. 'We can find out.'

Duo laughed harder. 'You're kind of weird, you know?'

'Yeah. So that was a no on the beer?'

'No. Thanks.' Duo leant back on the wall, his legs just a little too wide to not be an invitation, and Trowa tried very hard not to look below the belt. The mood was changing again, or Duo's mood was, and Trowa very much did not squirm or otherwise indicate that he had any kind of erection just from watching a man stand.

Then Duo said, 'I thought about you.'

'Should I ask what?'

A beat passed. Duo said, 'I masturbated thinking about you.'

Okay. He didn't squirm, but it was almost certainly the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, including piloting a Gundam. In his driest tone, he answered, 'Bet that's gotten kind of tricky now, too.'

Duo's smile went coy, eyes dipping away. Trowa watched the rise and fall of his chest in that dark cashmere sweater, the high collar of it stirring his braid as his head turned. He was a damn good-looking man.

'Why are you all the way over there?'

Duo nodded as if confirming something. 'I guess I'm waiting for you to invite me to bed.'

'I did that when I brought you here.' Trowa put the bottle down. He stood, enjoying the way the light caught the gleam of Duo's eyes following him. He crossed the shaggy suite carpet, a slow, rolling stride, caging Duo to wall. 'You sure you're up to it?'

'You'll have to be creative.'

'I can handle that.'

When Trowa was near enough, Duo reached out and pulled him in the rest of the way. His hand cupped to the front of Trowa's jeans, finding and rubbing down the line of his dick. 'Hey,' Duo murmured softly.

He bit back a groan, buried it in Duo's jaw, mouthing all that soft hair. 'Yeah?'

'Quatre's gonna gloat.'

'Let him. He has so few opportunities.'

Duo laughed. More importantly, he unzipped Trowa's jeans and dug a hand inside. Trowa dropped his mouth to Duo's, mindful of that painful-looking lip only for as long as it took Duo to hook a thumb around his ballsac. He hitched up into that welcoming hand, pushed Duo's sweater up, reaching for that nipple stud. He was disappointed to find it missing, although it made sense; it was the kind of thing that might get in the way of an undercover assignment, if that was what Duo had been hinting at. He wove a hand over Duo's neck instead, stroking warm flesh wherever he found it.

Duo murmured, 'I owe you a little.'

'Owe me what.'

Duo was outright jerking him off. Sure grip, hands just callused enough to make it rough. Perfect. 'I'm a lot of things,' Duo whispered. 'Never in the red.'

He'd had some general ideas about languid pacing, lovemaking at length, giving Duo something beyond compare to really knock his socks off. Those ideas died a very quick death. He ripped at Duo's fly, pushed at the waist, got his hands around Duo's asscheeks. 'Off,' he commanded, the most English he could manage. 'Off. Come on.' He got beneath the elastic of the undershorts, wiggled them off. Duo yelped as he grabbed another handful of ass and lifted. He Duo's legs up around his own waist and slammed him back into the wall. That ugly plastic clock jumped off a nail and fell, swinging wildly. Duo lost a gasp into Trowa's kiss.

So good. Not nearly enough. They mimed fucking, grinding just enough to break sweat and gulp back growing frustration. He managed to prop Duo against the wall with the weight of his body and one shoulder, freed a hand to slip down the curve of Duo's rear and rub along the crease of his behind. Duo was tight, hot like the cavity of his mouth, sucking him in. He rode Trowa's fingers, clenching on him, even as he fumbled for leverage with the casted arm. What he'd be like when he was fully functional--

No point waiting. They were both halfway there and he didn't want to waste it. He let Duo down long enough to shuck his own pants, hopping out of one leg and abandoning the effort of the other. 'Turn around, hurry.'

Duo stopped him with a hand on the chest. 'Condom in my wallet.'

'Uh. Yeah. Sure.' Somewhere in the tangle of denim on the floor. He got it out by flinging the entire contents all over the carpet and snapping up the little foil square out of the mess of credit cards and loose change. Duo bent over for him, cast propped on the wall, fist beside it, and Trowa rolled the condom over his leaking dick. He rubbed a line of minty-smelling lube down Duo's ass, and drilled in with a hiss.

Ohh, hell. He could barely think, much less move. He had both arms wrapped about Duo's body, his face buried in Duo's hair. The rub of that cashmere on his chest was almost too much sensation, above the heat enveloping his dick. 'God,' he breathed. 'God, you're-- God.'

'No-one's ever called me God before.' Duo dragged one of Trowa's hands from his chest down to his crotch, cramming it close. 'Touch me.'

He snapped his hips against Duo's ass and stroked him off. 'Hot.'

He must have hit the spot he was aiming for, because Duo tensed, his back arching, cock quivering in Trowa's fist. 'You-- want me to talk for you?'

'I just want you to enjoy it.' He wanted to enjoy it, too, and there wasn't a single thing about it that taxed that desire. Duo took the rhythm he set, Duo took over stroking himself so Trowa could use both hands on his hips, Duo even managed to reach back that casted arm, fingertips scrabbling to grip him by the thigh. Trowa used his teeth on Duo's shoulder, right through the cashmere, and earned himself a moan when he pushed in as deep as he could go and just humped Duo into the wall. He was shaking with the need to come, grinding his jaws.

Duo dropped his head back into the cradle of Trowa's chest. 'Tro, let me down. Come on.'

He obeyed, even managing to get them both to the floor with some minor form of grace, Duo on his back, Trowa covering him. But Duo had other ideas. 'Aw, fuck that,' he grinned, and knocked Trowa back with a foot to the hip. He crawled after Trowa, licked him from knee to nipple, and sat on his lap. 'Help me. I need another fucking hand--'

Another hand to hold Trowa's dick in place while Duo slid onto it. Trowa looked down to watch the tip disappear into Duo's body and thunked his head back to the carpet, all the blood in him rushing in opposite directions. Duo planted a hand on his chest and rocked, knees digging into the carpet. 'Yes?'

'Christ, you need to ask?'

'I thought I was God.' Duo bunched his thighs, rose up, squeezing tight on Trowa's cock. Then he sat back down. Hard.

'Fuck, baby.' He couldn't drag his eyes off Duo's face. They couldn't even hold each other's gaze, not at this cutthroat race, but he didn't need to. He just wanted to see Duo's every response, the sweat on his upper lip, the flush on his neck, the purpling tip of his cock leaking into Trowa's hand. So close. So close--

He knew Duo was going to come first by the way he stopped breathing. He slammed Duo into place, held him down. He felt damp on his belly, even as Duo's forehead came to rest on his collarbone. He wrapped Duo close, arms tight about him. It was enough. More than enough. He saw white behind his eyes, gave up breathing himself.

Absolute fucking perfection.

His fingers were in the braid. He had a fair idea that if he'd tried that any other time of life, Duo would have chopped off his hand and baked it. He got away with it now, and took the leisure, massaging the base of Duo's skull, his neck. The braid was softer than it looked. Like cornsilk, cool and fleeing his touch even as he tried to grasp it.

Duo was slow coming down from it, supine, not moving even as Trowa's cock softened in him. He left light kisses against Trowa's throat, and sighed. 'Not bad,' he said finally, sleepily.

Trowa couldn't be bothered to open his eyes, even for that. 'Gee, thanks. Maybe with a little practise it can be actually decent.'

Duo laughed airlessly. Then wiggled, aimlessly at first, then with real ambition. Separated from Trowa's lap with a sticky velcro rip of skin tacking off skin, followed by a fwoosh on the carpet.

Trowa labouriously rolled his head. 'Where you going?'

'Now I seriously have to piss.'

'Need help?'

'Less you want a swimming pool.' Duo waved the casted hand at him.

He didn't for a second think it. 'Go on.' Besides, from the floor he had the view. Duo kissed him, deeply, then rolled to his feet, wobbly-kneed as a newborn calf. Trowa admired his skinny ass and dangling bits as they wandered away from him. He didn't even mind the fact that Duo switched on practically every light in the suite in the process of finding the bath.

He took care of both the spent condom and a scratchy sock that had never come completely off. He made it back to the couch to examine a spot of rugburn. Duo returned shortly, carrying a flannel. He went to his knees at Trowa's feet, nudging Trowa's legs wide. He scrubbed, without asking, starting at Trowa's neck and working his way down Trowa's chest, popping the buttons of Trowa's shirt and swiping with the warm soapy cloth as he went. Right before he got to Trowa's groin, he glanced up, a smirk hovering on his mouth. 'I'll be gentle,' he promised.

'Thanks, baby.' He curled his hand about Duo's neck, pulled him up for a kiss. Duo squeezed, just a little, with that cottony flannel, and Trowa sat back with a groan. 'Give me a couple minutes, okay?'

'Fair enough.' Duo gave himself a swipe, too, and folded the cloth. 'You got anything to eat? We never did do dinner.'

'We can call for pizza or something.'

'You're gonna need more energy than that.'

'I like a challenge.' He forced himself to his feet. Duo stood, automatic little gesture that might have been courtesy but was probably competetiveness. So Trowa yanked him by the arm, hauled him over a shoulder, and carried him into the bedroom. Duo slapped him in the back of the head. Trowa slapped him on the ass, and Duo laughed. 'Sweeping me off my feet already?'

'You know it, baby.' He dumped Duo on the mattress with at least a little care for the arm, and Duo bounced as his shoulders hit. Trowa crawled up after him, creeping up under his thighs and sliding his hands under Duo's sweater. 'Finally. Where you should have been all along.'

'In your bed.' Duo pushed a fluffy pillow out of his way, spilling the rest over the sides of the bed. 'You like your comforts, huh.'

'You mean a mattress and sheets? Yeah.' He combed the dark hair of Duo's groin, stroked the curls of his treasure trail into an orderly queue marching up his belly to his navel. 'Don't you?'

'Why do you call me that? Baby?'

'No-one ever gave you a pet name before?' He bent to suck at Duo's lips. 'Take this sweater off, baby. I want to see all of you.'

'You don't think that's infantilising?'

'Tell me to stop and I'll stop.' He waited, while Duo screwed his mouth to the side. 'Is this a serious thing?'

'I haven't decided yet.' Duo rubbed sweat from his temple on his sleeve. 'No. I don't know. Sorry. You're just being goofy and I'm being a jerk.'

That sounded like an apology, but Duo was still tense, and his jaw was locked. Trowa settled next to him, not on top of him, puzzling through the whirlwind of heat coming off the other man and whether any of it was actually aimed at him, this moment. 'You okay?' he asked tentatively. 'You don't seem okay.'

'Tired.' Duo made a smile look like a wince. 'Bad job, I guess. Not Rwanda, but not great.'

No shit. 'I'll order food. Real food, not pizza.' He rolled off the bed and grabbed the light as went, since Duo seemed to like that. 'Chinese okay?'

'Yeah.'

He put in an order from memory, made a stab at kicking their scattered clothes into the same corner, picked up the contents of Duo's wallet. No helpful hints hiding in there, but that tracked, if Duo did undercover. Trowa didn't carry anything incriminating on him, either, once he had an identity established for the duration, even if that identity was only himself. A couple of coupons for grocery stores, all of which had outlets in multiple zones. No ticket stubs, no prescriptions waiting to be filled, no receipts, not even a library card. Not even his Preventers identification. If he'd been back for two weeks, he should have been carrying some kind of badge again. He did find two more condoms in the outside flap of the wallet, though. That was a lot of stock, considering they hadn't used one the night he'd gone to Duo's apartment.

He pulled on his jeans when it got chilly, walking around bare-legged. He opened two more beers in the kitchette and rummaged the drawers for the plateware supplied by the rental company, putting together a tray. The delivery came just as he was attempting to fold a napkin. He gave up on that. Paid for their food, dumped the entire paper bag atop the tray, and carried it into the bedroom.

Duo lay on his stomach, maybe dozing. He didn't move for Trowa's entrance. Trowa quietly set the tray on the bedside table and sat beside him, testing him for faking it-- but his breaths were convincingly deep and slow, and his eyes were moving beneath the bruised lids. Dreaming. The fingers on the casted arm were loose.

Trowa stretched out beside him. Duo hadn't bothered with a sheet, and he was too tempting, laid out like that. He stirred, a bit, when Trowa ran a hand up his thigh. Shifted when Trowa dipped a finger between his legs, playing with his balls, biting the nearest ass cheek like it was a crisp apple, soothing with kisses after. He glanced up to see Duo's good hand fisting in the duvet, eyes squeezed tightly shut now. When he slid a wet finger into Duo's hole, Duo's teeth mauled his lower lip white.

'Too sore?' he asked, and took the fitful toss of Duo's head for a promise. He nudged Duo's legs wider, covered him. 'Too soon? You brought all those rubbers for me, didn't you?' He pushed at the hem of Duo's sweater, to lave the small of Duo's back with his tongue.

Duo shoved him. He didn't see it coming, took half of it in the face. Duo was off the bed before he could protest, stalking out of the room. 'The hell did I do wrong?' Trowa called after him. 'I can't keep up with all the bipolar in here.'

No answer. Duo bounced the door off the wall, headed into the bath.

'Shit.' Trowa grabbed one of the pillows off the floor and shoved it behind his head. Duo's assignment might have been over for two weeks, but it obviously hadn't been long enough.

What had Quatre been thinking, pushing Duo at him? He knew Trowa better than any other man alive, and knew this storm of emotion wouldn't suit him. He wasn't a patient man, he wasn't a particularly nice man, and imagining he'd just let this crap wash over him because there was good-- great-- sex every so often. He didn't mind a little hard work where there was reward, but this was utterly incomprehensible. Maybe Duo should go fuck around with Heero. Heero would weather it with a blink and take what he wanted without trying to understand.

The shower was running. He made enough noise entering the bath that Duo would know he was there. No surprises. 'Need a piss,' he said. 'I won't flush.'

'Don't be gross. Flush it.'

'I meant so the water wouldn't--' He stood over the john and opened his jeans. 'You okay?' he asked slowly. 'In there. Find the, uh, soap, and everything.'

'You don't have soap.' Duo pushed back the curtain. 'And the hotel shampoos are out.'

It was unfair for him to look that good, naked and wet. Trowa had to think to remember why he was mad. He ran his tongue over his teeth. 'There's more under the sink. I just take them from wherever I stay.' He grabbed the bag out from the cupboard, holding it out. Duo reached in and plucked out one tiny bottle.

'Zip up,' Duo said. 'Or come in. If you want.'

He meant to zip up. He was mildly surprised to find himself getting sprayed in the face from the showerhead. 'Your cast is getting wet,' he said.

'I'm keeping it out of the water.' Hand hooked on the curtain rod, as if he were just hanging out someplace. His fringe was plastered to his face, making him all eyes and pale mouth.

'Wash your back,' Trowa said.

'You don't have to.'

'I'm in here. What else would I do.' He sudsed his hands with the shampoo. 'You, uh, normally turn about. For the back.'

'Yeah.' Duo's mouth screwed sideways. 'Just...' He rubbed his nose, and turned.

Well. That explained the sweater staying on so long. Trowa pressed his fist against the hot shower tile, trying to just breathe through the urge to murder someone.

'You alive back there?'

'Yeah.' He touched, as gently as he could. The bruises on Duo's face were mild compared to this. Whoever had attacked him had been wearing boots. Steel toes, probably. Contusions still a vivid purple, yellowed on the edges. Trowa smoothed the shampoo over Duo's skin, breathing through his nose.

'I'm okay,' Duo said.

'You're not, you fucking liar.' He brushed down Duo's spine. No wonder he'd flinched when Trowa had gone for his back. It had probably shocked the shit out of him. Hurt. 'You shouldn't have let me push you into the wall.'

'It was good. You were good.' Duo covered his hand. Trowa wrapped an arm about his neck and pulled him back, put his nose into Duo's wet hair. 'Don't get all protective on me. Quatre told me about your work.'

'My work doesn't leave me looking like this. Yours shouldn't. Preventers should fucking protect you.'

'Preventers are there to protect other people. I'm not a child.'

'You were never a child.' Broken ribs. He could feel the bumps, without that thick sweater in the way. 'And you were definitely never a martyr.'

'Suicidal launch on Earth aside.'

'Don't bullshit me.' He turned Duo by the shoulders, lifting his cast out of the way, then reaching behind him to slap the water off. 'You make me crazy.'

Duo blinked. He pursed his lips, but the corners were tugging up. 'Do I.'

'You know you do.' He brushed Duo's hair out of his face. 'I don't know what to do with you or say to you and I don't know if that's how you want it or not.'

'I'm not trying to be difficult.' Duo's brow quirked. 'Mostly. I'm sorry. I want to say I won't always be like this, but then I really would be lying.'

'You could tell me what the hell happened.'

'I can't.' He smoothed the blunt lace of Duo's eyelashes, as they drooped low. 'It's classified. It's work. It just... is.'

That earned them silence, quiet and unhappy. He didn't argue. Didn't argue, either, when Duo moved to end it, bending for a towel from the pile on the floor, sniffing it. Squeezed water from his hair. 'You, uh... headed out,' Duo murmured. 'Speaking of work.'

'No.' He helped with the towel, and found another, mostly dry from the last time he'd used it, to drape over Duo's shoulders. 'I set my own schedule. So if I want to stay, I stay.'

Duo didn't ask. Duo wouldn't ask, or couldn't, but it was there in the strained bend of his neck, the unblinking stare directed at the gurgling drain at their feet.

'Food's getting cold,' Trowa said, and lifted Duo's face to his. 'I did promise you a dinner date.'

That was the first genuine smile he'd got out of Duo. It was worth the trouble.

**

He drove Duo back the next evening, when Duo declared he needed a real shower to wipe away a day of enthusiastic fucking and Trowa declared he wasn't going to watch Duo spend an hour with the little hotel hairdryer frying damp arm cast to a crisp afterward. It might have been simpler to make another run to the chemist for a plastic wrap-- he'd already been out of his suite once to raid the front desk for more condoms-- but a change of scenery seemed like a refreshing idea, and they couldn't actually spend every single minute finding new ways to exercise an orifice.

Maybe. If not for chafing, he would have been willing to give it a good shot.

As it was, there was a kind of hallucinatory relief in just being around Duo. Duo's hand was on his thigh the whole drive, stroking. Not precisely sexual, but it made him feel wired, awake. He dared to drape an arm over Duo's shoulders, even to rub his thumb up under Duo's braid, where the hair was especially soft, and Duo rolled his head to watch Trowa drive, a ghost of a smile hovering on his lips, never quite going away. It was good. Unadulterated good, and he'd have to give Quatre credit, after all.

They rode the lift to the fourteenth floor standing in a loose embrace, Duo's hand snagged in his belt loop, him resting his chin atop Duo's head. 'Hey,' Duo said. 'Do you know what a physicist's favourite food is?'

'I don't know.' He relaxed back against the mirrored walls of the lift, letting the hum settle into his bones. 'What.'

'Fission chips.'

He cracked a smile at his reflection. 'That's dumb.'

'Did you hear the one about the psychoanalyst who gives her patient the Rorschach test?'

'No. What's that one?'

'She shows her patients inkblot pictures and asks them what they see. The patient says the first one looks like two people fucking. She shows him another inkblot and he says it's two people fucking again. She shows him a third and he says the same thing. She tells him he's obsessed with sex. He says I don't know what you're talking about, you're the one with all the dirty pictures.'

He chuckled into Duo's hair. 'That's even dumber.'

'It's a true story.'

The lift let them out. Trowa took the keys from Duo's jacket. 'We're still getting take away. I'm not eating fake food again.'

'Soy isn't fake.'

'Cardboard, anyway.' He inserted the key, and stopped. He let go of Duo and pulled the gun from his ankle holster. Duo tensed as he straightened. 'Let me go in first, okay?'

'What the hell?'

'Did you leave it locked?'

Duo didn't have a sidearm, but he had a knife, flicking it into his palm with an ease that spoke of long practise, wrong hand or not. He held it low to his side, even as he stepped out of Trowa's way, letting him lead. Trowa was grateful not to fight about it, glad Duo had the sense to beware of his own limitations. Say that for the discipline of Preventers Corps. He wouldn't have made a similar gesture. He turned the handle slowly, soundlessly, almost but not quite feeling stupid. 'On three.'

They burst in to an apartment fully lit and smelling like cooking fish. And a man coming out of the galley, jumping a mile when they banged the door wide open.

'Who the fuck are you?' Trowa demanded, aiming at his eyes and thumbing the safety off.

Early thirties, Latino, big shoulders in a polo shirt, arms whipping back to grab a gun of his own out of a side holster. 'Preventers,' the man spat at them. 'Lower your weapon-- Duo.'

Behind Trowa's back, Duo was putting up his knife. His expression of disgust seemed to indicate overt caution wasn't warranted. The nudge he left in Trowa's back was an order, at least, so Trowa let his gun fall, though he didn't holster it. 'You've got company,' he said. 'Apparently.'

Duo's frown slid toward a cool blankness Trowa might have been wearing himself. 'How'd you get in here?' he asked the man.

'Jorge let me in.' The man looked between the two of them, slowly put up his gun. 'He forgot to feed your fish, by the way-- they died. Sorry.'

Duo said, 'Fuck.' That was it.

The exchange itself wasn't terribly enlightening. The body language was. Duo was rigid, wary. The Preventer was that store-bought hunk type that came a dime a dozen, short-clipped hair, neat clothes, average height. There were wine glasses on the bar, filled with red, set to either side of a new vase of flowers-- that was all the clue Trowa really needed to figure it out. The ex.

Trowa stepped back and put his arm about Duo. Squeezed his hip. Possessively.

The ex saw it. A ripple went across his chisled jaw. 'I saw your report on the op,' he told Duo. 'I'd heard it didn't go well. I thought maybe you'd like a little-- taking care of.' He turned back to the stove, gave the pans a rifle, turned off the oven. 'Salmon and pine nuts, asparagus. I can run you to the doctor's tomorrow. The message was on your machine. You missed an appointment.'

Duo shrugged irritably. 'The point of breaking up with you was that I wouldn't have to see you anymore.'

'I didn't come here thinking-- whatever, I just thought, I know how stressful it is, I just thought maybe you'd like dinner and conversation.' The man hesitated, looking between Duo and Trowa. Trowa smiled pleasantly.

'Nice of you,' Trowa commented. 'Wasn't that nice of him, baby?'

'Duo. Can we talk privately? I think--'

'Smells good,' Trowa added. 'I'm sure we'll enjoy it.'

That earned him a glare of moderate loathing. 'We haven't met. Juan Cuartero.'

'Hi.' He didn't offer his own name. He did put his hand back in Duo's hair.

Cuartero visibly clenched his jaw. 'One of the Gundam Pilots. Barton, right?' Trowa inclined his head. 'Duo has your picture. All of you.'

'I'm surprised you bothered to learn that much about us,' Trowa said. 'From what I heard, you weren't too interested in his past.'

Duo was tapping his fingers against his leg, a staccato of growing impatience. He interrupted. 'Go home, Johnny.'

Cuartero smoothed back his hair. 'I know you're mad at me,' he said carefully. 'And you should be, I've been so stupid about this. So just-- just think about that. We've got a lot invested in each other. When you've cooled down, please, give me a call.'

'Nice of you to stop by, Johnny,' Trowa said, 'but next time, call ahead, okay? Duo and I keep kind of odd hours.'

Cuartero was getting belligerent. But Duo didn't help him, didn't so much as blink to acknowledge that. And maybe Cuartero did know enough to walk before he started something Duo would finish ugly, because he didn't keep at it. He picked up his coat from a barstool. He gave them a good berth as he passed, and didn't look back as he left. He closed the door behind him.

Duo locked it. With his back to Trowa, he said, 'You don't own me either, so don't look so fucking smug.'

'I'm not. But I sure as hell never broke into your place and set you up for dinner and a make-up screw without asking.'

'Yeah.' Duo shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the peg by the door. 'Yeah, you haven't. Don't ever.'

'I won't.'

'Go see if he finished cooking.'

'Sure.' He pushed his luck just enough to kiss Duo on the side of the neck, figuring if Duo let him it meant he still had good odds of getting laid later. Duo let him, but took an elbow swipe at him, half-hearted effort. 'Why'd you break up with him?' Trowa asked, opening the oven door.

'I'm not sure that's really your business.'

'Oh. Yeah. Right. But he knows you did, right?' Fancy dish. Trowa found a mitt and removed it.

Duo's expression didn't give much away, though Trowa didn't look at him directly to test it. 'I guess he's more stubborn than I thought.'

There were plates in the same cupboard where he'd found those weird mugs, last time. Trowa used his fingers to transfer fillets and dumped the asparagus from the pan on top of the fish. It tasted good when he licked his fingers. 'Guess you didn't dump him over his cooking skills.'

Duo looked at it as Trowa transferred the plates to the bar, then snorted and shook his head. 'I hate salmon.'

'He know that?' Cuartero had already set out forks and knives. Trowa settled himself in front of one of the plates and dug in. Duo was slower, sitting, but he took the cue and mimicked Trowa, even sipping at the wine when Trowa did. Finally he heaved a sigh. He switched his fish for Trowa's asparagus. 'You better hope he didn't spit in it,' he muttered.

'Doubt it. He was cooking to get you back.'

'He didn't fucking want me back. He wants me to want him back so he can fuck me over in a month.' That emerged with some vehemence. Duo bit it in with veg, chomping viciously.

'Do you want him back?'

'Fuck off.'

'Okay.' He didn't think it had been an unreasonable question. Then again, if Duo had been back from his assignment two weeks, and Cuartero was just now breaking in to romance him, then Duo hadn't been spreading the news anywhere. He couldn't picture Cuartero curled up on that couch, though. Not with those crisp pants and shiny loafers.

'You got plans to get shitfaced?' he asked, the last successful question he managed that evening, when Duo drained his wineglass in three big swallows.

Duo slammed the glass down, the stem vibrating atonally. 'I can drink if I feel like it. If you don't want it, I don't care.'

'I didn't say that. Fuck, you're in a bad mood all of a sudden. My fault or Johnny's?'

'I don't particularly like how either of you acted.'

'Sorry.'

'Are you always going to do that?'

'I didn't do anything.'

'If we were dogs, you'd have pissed on me.'

Trowa let his fork drop, figuring they were going to be fighting for a while, not eating. 'I thought I was protecting you,' he said.

'He's an ex-boyfriend, not a juggernaught with a tommy.'

'He's a psycho who got someone to break him into your place so he could be here when you, beat all to shit, came home.'

'Oh, please.'

He shrugged. 'Should I go?'

'If I wanted you gone I'd tell you.' Duo turned the wine glass on its base, rotating it, rotating. 'You want to go?'

'No,' Trowa said. 'We had a good day. I thought maybe that was where we were heading. To a good thing.'

Duo didn't quite meet his eyes. He didn't know what that meant, it was that un-Duo-like. 'Yeah,' Duo said, stilted. 'I kind of think that too.'

'So accept my apology then.'

Duo dropped his chin onto his fist. 'Fuck. My fish are dead.'

'I can take you shopping for more tomorrow.' He gambled, thinking the storm might be past. He switched his glass for Duo's, and took that bite of fish, at last. 'Eat your dinner,' he said. 'The man worked hard on it.'

Duo bit his lips together. 'Don't be a prick,' he said, but it was without heat now. He ate a spear of asparagus, leafy head first, and winked. Trowa laughed.

He woke, disoriented, alone on the couch, hours later. It took him a minute to locate a clock-- over the stove in the galley, a little red glow. It was half two. He stretched, found the cold on the outside of the blanket with bare toes, empty cushion with his hand. Rubbed sand out of his eyes and turned his head toward the bath, but it was dark, the door propped open.

He sat up. 'You here?' he asked quietly, wondering if he was dreaming.

'Here.'

Behind him. Trowa rubbed at his eyes again. 'Come back to-- couch,' he ordered. 'Or at least turn up the heat. Freezing in here. Cheapskate.'

'We don't all steal pots of gold from third world dictators for a living.' He could make Duo out now, a shadow against darker blurs. There was a desk over there, he thought, but with the curtains drawn and no lights it was far too dim to read anything. Trowa levered to his feet, pulling the quilt with him. Duo's skin was icy, too, when Trowa sent wandering hands down his chest, playing with the little line of hair between his pecs, stroking his collarbone.

'He said you had a doctor appointment,' he ventured. 'If your back is bothering you, I could run out. Get you something. Or maybe another glass of wine. Relax you.'

'My back is fine.'

He was sitting stiff, unresponsive to Trowa's touch. They hadn't had sex before they'd settled for the night, just a mutual handjob in the shower, a considerable comedown after all the acrobatics at the hotel. He'd assumed it was exhaustion catching up. He didn't think that was a lie, not that easily spoken or that thoughtlessly offered, but there was something wrong, Duo so tense he felt like he was going to snap.

'Okay,' he said. 'You maybe want to tell me, then, because I'm out of guesses. You're not pissy about that asshole showing up here. That was stupid, but you put him in his place. And me, for that matter.'

He tried his thumbs against the tendons of Duo's neck, but didn't want to hurt if Duo was too strung out to take a massage on sore muscles. Duo's pulse was jumpy. His shoulders were hunched.

'He was in my apartment,' Duo murmured. Through clenched jaws.

'Yeah.'

'I don't--' Duo rolled his head, cracked his neck. Cracked the knuckles on his good hand. Trowa stopped rubbing. 'I don't know what he touched,' Duo said, forcing it out in a gutteral voice dredged up from no-where good. 'I don't know what he moved, what he looked at, and it's-- stupid. I know it's stupid. But I keep sitting here thinking-- he was in my space. _My_ space. It shouldn't matter, but it does.'

Trowa let his hands fall. 'Yeah. No. You were on a rough assignment. You've been out of your own for three months. I get what it is to want to come back and have a safe place. Un-- violated.'

'I'm going to go sit in my car for a while.' Duo stood, and Trowa took a wide step back. Duo dug in the desk, turning up a compact disc player and earbuds. 'Sorry. Just sleep.'

'Yeah.'

There was enough light to catch the white of Duo's eyes, just barely. 'I'm sorry,' Duo said again, a miserable little whisper. 'I just can't be in here right now.'

'I can go, if you want. If it's a problem to have me in here while you're not.'

'No, it's already--' Duo shook his head. 'Sorry,' he said again, and left before Trowa could think to offer him the quilt.

He retreated to the couch for a while just to absorb the silence. Then he stumbled around looking for a lamp, and sat at the galley bar, shivering in the quilt, picking at the placemats. No idea what to make of that interlude.

Neurotic, a little. He got being a little neurotic. After a job that went wrong. They weren't so different on that account. Except that Duo had carved himself out a home, and he could guess how he'd feel if he'd just found someone inside it, rooting around in his crap. He didn't think Cuartero had probably done that. Maybe Duo, intellectually, didn't think it, either. It seemed highly probable, in fact, that Cuartero had done whatever spying he'd planned on doing when he was actually Duo's boyfriend, not now, when he had more to gain from behaving himself. But Duo had been somewhere that wasn't his apartment for two weeks after three months on a shit job, losing lives, watching lives lost that he cared about, because it was Duo all over to care even if he couldn't do fuck all about it. And after all that, the thing he lost his shit about was a filched key and a pile of ruffled mail in a cruddy empty apartment.

Put him in one hell of a position. Sit on his hands, because Duo needed him to. Or take advantage of what was already wrecked, because Duo would assume he had.

He went to the desk, and opened the drawers.

No different than the wallet. Nothing to identify him, nothing about it that said who Duo Maxwell was, what made him tick off-time with everything around him. Bills, the usual kinds of bills, rent and water and gas. Installation guides for the kitchen appliances, a local phone book. Trowa ditched the obvious and went on his knees under the desk, feeling along the seams for false walls. Nothing noticeable. But Duo wouldn't put a piece of furniture in plain sight with secrets so easily pried out, would he, not if there was a chance someone more dangerous than a nosy ex could break in. There were no extra locks on that front door and no cameras in the hall. Trowa checked the bath, but he already knew that would be fruitless. Everything about Duo was right on the sleeve, including the things he avoided. The secrets would be in the bedroom.

It wasn't locked. It didn't have to be, with only Duo living there. But it was dark and a little stale-smelling, a place not used. Trowa didn't flip on the light, just in case Duo happened to be somewhere that wasn't the carpark below the building. He used the soft glow of his mobile phone screen to light his steps. Boxes. No labels. Trowa checked the pattern of each lid, so he could replace it correctly, and opened them.

He'd expected papers. He'd expected a computer, maybe, the kind of thing an ex-revolutionary might cart along on the path to a righteous life, with one eye over the shoulder on the past. Not-- art. Canvas art, stretched on solid gold frames, wrapped professionally in shrink and crated. He couldn't see well enough to tell what the pictures were, but he felt with his fingers the texture of oils. Originals. Maybe they were both robbing third world dictators after all, huh. Another box held clothes. Rich textures there, too, the kind of clothes people like Quatre wore, the kind of clothes that usually went in cedar-panelled closets on velvet hangers. And a shoebox full of keys. Just keys. Car keys, house keys, safety deposit box--

He didn't feel so much as a twinge of conscience about taking the keys til he was back on the couch, pretending to be asleep. The part of him that shot people without blinking took the keys without thinking twice about it, stashed them in his coat, walked away, lay down, pulled up the quilt and shut his eyes and then blinked up at Duo an hour later as if he'd never moved an inch, innocent as new snow.

'Hey,' he said. He even yawned, pure theatrics, and got a tired smile out of Duo. 'You okay?'

'I'm sorry.' Duo crouched next to him. Stroked his hair sweetly, even affectionately. He looked tired, but he didn't look on the edge anymore. He kissed Trowa, a soft little kiss that landed beside his mouth, and then he rested his head on the cushion beside Trowa.

Trowa tweaked his ear. 'Don't be sorry. Just come sleep.'

'I can't. I'm sorry. I know I'm bugging out. I know it's dumb—'

'It's not.' Trowa did remember the quilt this time, draped it over Duo's shoulders. He was frozen through. 'I think we need to go driving,' he decided, yawning again, for real this time. 'You ever been out on Route One for the dawn? Forget the Golden Gate, that's tourist crap. Like... Devil's Slide outside Pacifica.'

'No. Never have.'

'That's where we'll go, then.' He sat up, sliding his knees to either side of Duo's body. 'Duo. Stop being afraid that I'll walk away. If I was going to leave, I'd be gone.'

He'd finally said the right thing. Duo looked up at him, clear-eyed. He nodded.

'Okay,' Trowa agreed. 'See if Cuartero left you any other treats. Would be nice if he'd thought of breakfast, too.'

'Dick,' Duo sighed, and went to do as he was told.


	8. Trowa - Three

Trowa dragged a fingertip through the light hair on Duo's calf, following the faint line of an old scar. 'This one?'

'Mm. Don't remember that one much. Had it a long time. Rusty fence, I think. Didn't have anyone back then to kiss it and make it better.'

Trowa obeyed that suggestion. He added a twist of his wrist to Duo's dick in his hand, too, squeezing gently up the shaft to the head. The arch of Duo's flushed neck was like performance art. 'This one?' Trowa asked, touching the half-circle shaped divet on the left side of Duo's belly.

'Shrapnel. Early Gundam testing.' Duo's thighs flexed about Trowa's waist. 'That-- one there on your shoulder?'

'This one? You found the embarrassing one. Surgery after I fell off a horse at the circus.'

Duo huffed a laugh. ' _You?_ You actually fell off of something? I thought you were half cat.'

'My talents end at trick riding, I guess.' He caught Duo's hand as it caressed his chest, and ran his tongue over the scar on his palm. 'This one.'

Duo opened his mouth, closed it. 'Musical chairs,' he said finally.

'What's that mean, musical chairs?' He registered the tone only after he'd asked the follow-up. 'You don't have to tell me if it's weird.'

'There's a lot about the last week that's weird, man.' Duo was quiet a moment, and Trowa remembered to resume stroking him off, grabbing a squirt from the bottle of lube to keep it slick and smooth. Duo sighed, his head dropping back, eyes drooping closed. 'Last few lifetimes,' Duo said, just disconnected enough that Trowa had to think about what he meant. Duo missed his concurring nod.

'When Oz captured me and Deathscythe,' Duo said then. He shrugged, but Trowa didn't know what to make of that. He thought they might be far enough out-- a decade out from the days when Duo might have blamed him outright for destroying Deathscythe, especially since he'd got it back repaired and better from their engineers on Lunar a month later. He didn't know, though, and it was Duo's storytime, so he didn't ask, just slowed his strokes on Duo's cock, let him think enough to string the words together.

'They held me on a satellite,' Duo murmured, licking his teeth. 'Never have been sure which one. I think it was off of L3. Heero would know. Keep forgetting to ask him. Doesn't matter really. They were questioning me, not about me, about the rest of you. They had a good playbook, good cop, you know, get to know you, sympathy and respect and treats. I lied my fucking face off to them and they were losing patience. The rest of you were dormant, I guess, except for Wufei; I remember a lot of questions about 05. He must have done something that scared them, because one day I'm in there with my regular guy and this new one comes in. Bad cop. He just walked in, held my hand down on the table, and used a nailgun. Said we were gonna play musical chairs, and the music wouldn't stop til I answered their questions truthfully.' Duo cracked an eyelid at him. 'You got tense. It really bothers you to hear about this stuff.'

'I don't know what you want me to say about that.'

'Nothin.' Duo propped himself up on an elbow. 'You know we've all got stories like that. Sphere's a shitty place.' He waggled his eyebrows. 'I haven't even told you all my dental horror tales. L2 specialised in plagues, not fluoride.'

'It's fine.' He sucked on Duo's jaw, turned his attention toward actually bringing Duo off. 'Just hope you killed the bastard.'

'Dunno.' Duo guided him helpfully down to concentrate on the shaft, the tip of his tongue peeking out between teeth that looked perfectly fine to Trowa. 'Heero triggered a bay full of mobile dolls to turn on the base,' Duo added, slightly breathless now. 'Kablowee. The man can do explosions. It was practically operatic. Nice of him, wasn't it.'

'I don't want to talk about Heero right now.' He shoved Duo flat. Unrolled the condom before Duo could remind him. Duo was out of position, the wrong hand in the way, trying to guide him in, but he'd had plenty of practise over the last few days. He was in Duo with just a twist of his hips, hauling Duo's splayed legs up to his shoulders and bending him in half. Duo was limber enough to do it easily, close enough to the edge that it hardly took more than that for him. Trowa didn't give him a pause for the orgasm, only taking care to stabilise his bruised ribs as he sought to get as deep as he could, hips flush to Duo's ass. 'Shit,' he hissed, clinging by the fingernails for dear life, stars bursting like those exploding mobile dolls behind his eyelids.

He was aware, some point that felt like a long time later, of hearing Duo's heartbeat. His ear was mashed to Duo's chest. He'd fallen asleep. Literally passed out from sex. That, he decided muzzily, was either an accomplishment, or a pretty epic failure. He could still feel one of Duo's legs over his back, toes waving lazily back and forth. Duo's arm cradled his head, almost tenderly.

He coughed, and sat up. 'Um,' he said, wiping his eyes. 'Yeah.'

'Don't be embarrassed. I thought it was kind of cute.' Duo used his arm for leverage, pulling himself up. Trowa tried not to turn his head as Duo kissed him, dropped his chin to Trowa's shoulder. Teasing fingers combed through his hair, tugged his earlobe. 'You thirsty?' Duo asked. 'I could put some tea on.'

'I don't drink tea.'

'Oh.' After a moment, Duo straightened. 'I don't, uh, we're out of coffee. Want to make a grocery trip?'

'Yeah. Okay.'

They were interrupted by the strident bell-tone of a phone ringing. Duo grimaced. 'It's work,' he said. 'I need to get that.'

'Fuck your work, Duo.'

'No, I need to get it.' Duo was on his feet before Trowa thought to stop him. His hand closed on the empty air. Duo opened the top desk drawer and withdrew two mobile phones. He checked only the one that was ringing, leaving the other sitting on the desktop. With a glance at Trowa, he put the phone to his ear. 'Hola,' he greeted the caller. 'Si. No. Estoy bien.' He listened, silently, but when he would have responded, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and addressed Trowa instead. 'You mind if I step outside? This might be a minute.'

'Sure.' Trowa halted him. 'Hey. Pants.'

'Oh yeah.' Duo tossed him a bright smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, with business waiting on the line. He cradled the phone between shoulder and ear and shimmied into his trousers. 'Me dan un segundo. Necesito un poco de privacidad.'

When Duo slipped out the front door, closing it behind him, Trowa sat drumming his fingers on the couch. He knocked the towel they'd been fucking around on to the floor, nudged it out of his way. Tossed the condom in the trash bin's general direction. Scrubbed at his hair, at the crust of who knew which bodily fluid on his stomach.

Duo wasn't hurrying back in. Trowa gave it only a few more seconds, a clock somewhere that he still couldn't fucking locate ticking audible seconds away.

He left the phone on the desk pad as Duo lad laid it, checking it out with just brushes of his finger. It was a Preventers-issue mobile, which left open the question of what phone Duo had taken with him out the door. New tech, too, compared to some of the dinosaur stuff Trowa had seen agents carting around. If Une thought she was saving budget by distributing the good stuff only where absolutely needed, she was doing it in a strange way-- what did Duo do that needed a fancy new mobile he wasn't using? Trowa keyed his way into the saved contacts, but it wasn't enlightening. No names, and he hadn't expected there to be, if Duo did any kind of sensitive investigating, but it added to the mystery. A phone without data capacity would have served just as well.

He made it into the kitchen galley by the time Duo returned. He filled a glass with water out of the sink and drank. 'Hey,' he greeted the other man. 'Everything okay?'

Duo rubbed at his ribs as if they might be bothering him, but only shrugged his response. He fetched an aloe juice from the fridge and sipped from the bottle. 'I have to go in to the office. I haven't been in for a while.'

'Like three months?'

'Yeah.' Duo put a shoulder to the fridge, facing Trowa. 'You've probably got, like, shit. Somewhere.'

'Yeah, probably.' There seemed to be something of significance about the way Duo was hesitating. Or not hesitating, exactly, but waiting on him. For reaction, maybe. Trowa made an effort to move his face, putting on a smile. He brushed a lock of hair out of Duo's face, tucking it behind his ear. 'Ask me if I'll come back, baby.'

'Don't make me ask.' Duo tugged him near by a belt loop, hips tilting up for his. Trowa wound a hand about his neck, massaging lightly. 'We haven't exactly talked about what happens when the spell is broken.'

'You think this is a spell?'

'Unless you spiked my drink when I wasn't looking. That was the last of the condoms, anyway...' Duo shrugged. 'I haven't even told Heero or Wufei I'm back. And don't pretend like that doesn't please you just a little bit.'

'Who's pretending?' Duo searched his face, though, and Trowa inhaled. 'I can, I have to see what's on my plate, but I'll-- try to stick around the area. At least until you're back into the normal stuff.'

'And then?'

'I don't know, Duo.'

Duo hadn't wanted to ask, and he didn't. He nodded, stiff and bluffing through it. 'I have to get moving,' he mumbled. 'Stay if you want. Apparently anyone can get the fuck in anyway.'

'I'll leave when you do.' He dropped a kiss onto Duo's collarbone, over a hickey he'd made a day ago. 'You smell like strawberry lube.'

'We never did get all the way through your bag, did we.' Duo wrung out a grin for that. 'You're such a slut. Who even hauls around a basket of dildos?'

'It was a gift,' he said mildly. 'Would have been churlish to turn it down.'

'They must love you at airports. First that bag of money, all those guns. Dongs are plastic, at least.' They separated reluctantly. Duo's hand lingered near his, almost as if he were trying to hold, but he didn't, and Trowa just didn't know what to make of it. 'Well,' Duo said. 'Gonna shower.'

'Yeah.' Trowa watched him go. The other mobile phone went with him, but Trowa supposed it didn't matter. He put Duo's juice away, and went to find his own mobile. It was in his coat pocket, on silent. He dialled, and put it to his ear, waiting til he heard the water running in the bath to press the 'Call' button.

'It's me,' he said softly. 'Time for a meet. Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow, then.'

 

**

 

He didn't intend, precisely, to follow Duo. It was just that he didn't have anything else to do. And his driving sort of acted indepedently of his thoughts. Or his thoughts acted independently of his intentions, because he certainly thought about it, when he watched Duo's car leave the park, and he consciously spent the next twenty minutes tailing him from an unobtrusive distance, taking a few turns to keep far enough behind, dropping back whenever possible into the crowd of mid-afternoon traffic.

It became an interesting exercise, precisely, the moment he realised Duo wasn't heading toward Preventers HQ. Preventers HQ was uptown, even the Narcotics office building that was separate these days from the main building where admin services were still housed. Duo was driving in the opposite direction. He didn't know enough about San Francisco's neighbourhoods to figure out the significance right away. Only when he started paying attention to the faces on the streets, and comparing them to the face of the man he was following, did it strike him. Duo wasn't just leaving the shiny clean world of Preventers behind, this part of town. He'd left a whole class strata behind, and the racial balance had tipped noticeably, too. This was Hispanic California, this part of the City.

Duo had been speaking Spanish on the mobile. On the non-work-mobile. This wasn't for Preventers at all.

Or if it was, it had a lot to say about whether or not Duo's 'job' had actually-- ended, when he said it had. Three months and two weeks. Three weeks, now. Three weeks in which he'd apparently reported, but not gone back to the office, not made an appearance to his fellow Preventers, including Cuartero who possibly worked face to face with him, and Heero and Wufei, and Trowa wondered sharply now if sex didn't turn him into a raving idiot that he'd just taken that information at face value, unforgivably slow on the uptake. Yuy couldn't be more obviously in love with Duo if he'd tried, that was years in the making, and Chang had grown a few human-like traits from hanging around Duo over the years, and might actually be concerned with whether he'd lived through this supposed 'job'.

Duo parked outside a non-descript block of buildings, and Trowa hugged the kerb behind the corner, straining to see without exposing himself. The storefront he entered was just a pair of glass doors with bars over them, no different than the rest of the street, and the sign was too small to read. Trowa dug his long-lense camera out the backseat, and snapped a capture of the sign. He took a few of the block, as well, got the cross-streets and some of the more interesting graffiti visible on the brick over a bridge, and used a spare book in his duffel to make notes for himself, the time and-- didn't question it until he was putting all of that away and put his hand in his pocket to grab a stick of gum, and found the keys he'd stolen out of Duo's apartment.

Right.

It was possible to go too far. He didn't investigate everyone he slept with. Well-- he didn't investigate them to this extent, no matter what he told Quatre. He wasn't actively paranoid, most of the time. And Duo wasn't making a move to question what Trowa had put in front of him, so he couldn't claim it was counteractive, scooping the dirt before Duo exposed him. If anything, Quatre-- Quatre had pre-empting him, asking so early on if he were looking into Duo, putting the nugget in his head that there was something to find if he went looking.

He drew an inky circle with the sputtering pen in the margins of his book. Duo wasn't that much of a mystery. If he went looking, he'd find what he expected to-- the kind of shady details any former Gundam Pilot had. Really, Quatre was the only one who even technically existed on paper, and that made him the shadiest of all of them, the one with the most to bury. Trowa had disappeared a lot of paper on his behalf in the campaign for Vice Foreign Minister, after Quat had done a piss-poor job scrubbing out the obvious top-layer himself. Quatre would never ask him to do it, and Duo would never ask it either, but that didn't mean it didn't need to be done. They didn't lead safe lives. Quatre wasn't likely to end out beaten like Duo, but beaten like Duo wasn't the worst possibility, either. There were a lot worse ways to destroy a Gundam Pilot than to rough him up and break a few bones. Musical chairs was amateur. People with tempers got distracted with causing personal pain, and ignored the opportunity to cause widespread damage. Trowa had spent a lifetime learning the difference between a target and an opportunity.

Duo had made himself an opportunity for someone, these last three months. I got made, he'd told Trowa. Someone knew he was a Preventer. And he'd taken care of it, he'd said, but he hadn't fully come in, either. He was laying low until-- what? Until he knew for certain that his identity hadn't leaked? Until he'd seen for sure that there were no repurcussions for whoever he'd had to kill to protect himself?

He was in my apartment. That made more sense in retrospect. Not just that his ex-boyfriend would break in and try to butter him up and fish around Duo's things when Duo wasn't there. That Cuartero might not have been the only one to do it.

Still not Trowa's problem. That was a Preventers problem, and, whatever Une thought of Trowa's grasp of the reasons, Trowa was not that invested in Preventers' future.

But he had a twist of the gut, even imagining walking away from Duo.

Which meant he should.

God, which meant he should. He knew he had a tendency to focus-- obsess. He'd done it with Heero, he'd done it with Quat, if he did it now with Duo he'd eventually just be left with Wufei and then he'd be out of Pilots and he'd probably have to go with Une or something creepy like that. Duo was nothing all that special, not really, not compared to Heero, who had been god-like at fifteen, Hercules wrapped in a Kafka wrapped in Archangel Michael. Not compared to Quat, who had been a golden boy, untouchable until Trowa had touched him, who had opened for him with blinding warming love and seen him, when he'd been invisible his entire life. Duo was just a guy, a nice enough guy who clearly had some kind of temper issue and probably a fair amount of baggage that Trowa really didn't care about, and a towering amount of emotion that just fired off in all directions all the damn time like a beam weapon wrecking everything indiscriminately. And Trowa standing there with inadequate shielding, no idea what the hell was even attacking him.

None of which logic stopped him from turning the key in the ignition, depressing the pedal, turning the wheel, and driving off to break into Preventers' for Duo's personnel file.

He wanted Duo's casework, wanted the report on this last job that Cuartero had mentioned, but the case number would be in the personnel file, and personnel files were the kind of thing that were kept on-hand for reference. He got inside by trailing a maintenance crew and pickpocketing an ID off a guy who lingered at the front desk to flirt with the secretary, and lifted a hat with a bland logo from the truck off-loading water coolers at the back dock. After that it was largely an issue of killing time, waiting for the staff in the Human Resources Office to pack up and head out at the dinner hour. He occupied himself in a supply closet making airplanes out of copier paper until the lights went out at six.

The file cabinets were locked, but Trowa picked them easily enough. Preventers were still a small enough organisation to keep everything on-site and in paper, and he located Duo's file alphabetically, nothing more difficult than that. He made a copy on the copier, just to have the documentation, but only read the list of case numbers for the moment. He booted the computer at the front desk. It required a passcode, and he entered his own key. He didn't have access to quite everything, but it gave him the reports. He printed the one with the most recent date. He printed, too, the call sheet with the list of all of Duo's cross-indexed confidential contacts. He didn't have permissions for Name Check, but there were other ways to track that down.

He wiped the cache before he logged out, and wiped the keyboard with a tissue just to be on the safe side. He collected his papers, and closed the door behind him.

 

**

 

'Have you ever done dim sum before?' Une asked him. A waiter with a cart of small covered dishes paused at their table, and Une sent the old woman on her way with just a flick of her fingers.

'I tend to like my food in larger, more portable quantities.' Trowa had finally had tea forced on him after all. Anything naturally produced by a swamp didn't count as a beverage, so far as he was concerned. He kept looking for a way to order liquor, but he didn't read Mandarin well enough to decipher the menu, and there were no pictures to point to.

Another cart passed by, this time with something he recognised as dumplings. He didn't get to order for himself. Une did something with her hand again, and a plate was deposited in front of him. 'You've been in the area longer than usual,' Une said, delicately selecting a morsel off her own plate with her chopsticks. 'Taking a bit of a holiday?'

'New fuckbuddy,' he answered casually. 'Taking some playtime.'

'Why, Trowa.' She curved her mouth in an amused smile that wasn't at all proprietary, except for the slight tightening of skin around her eyes. She bit a dumpling in half.

'He's more your type than mine, really. Pretty. Devoted to the cause.' Trowa ate a dumpling whole. Needed soy sauce. 'Wears the uniform well,' he said around the mouthful.

'One of mine?' she asked coolly. Another gesture got them a plate of tentacles. He was in no doubt that was a metaphor. And a warning.

He picked one slimy squiggle up with thumb and forefinger, and slurped it in. Showed her his teeth when he swallowed. 'Duo Maxwell. I guess he is a Preventer, isn't he.'

It might just have been surprise. Her chin lifted, as she evaluated him.

Her next selection was some kind of rice cake. Sweet with a dark paste inside. Trowa sat back with it, chewing slowly, wondering where she'd strike next. Steeling himself.

It was almost surgical, how she knew just the right cut to make. 'He's not as virginal as your usual picks,' she said.

He barely let himself blink. He was sure he didn't otherwise react. 'Virginal.'

She lifted a hand in a shrug. 'You tend to set your sights on an ideal. Maxwell... a little used, isn't he.' She finished her dumplings, eating elegantly, unhurried. 'I don't mean to disparage him. From what I understand, it's not uncommon for people with his upbringing to suffer some kind of emotional attachment-- well, issues. And he's discreet enough. He even manages to use it to his advantage as an agent. Clearly.'

He stopped a passing waiter with an outstretched hand. 'Beer,' he said. 'You understand me? Whatever beer you have.'

Une tried the rice cake. 'Mm,' she nodded. 'I always enjoy the lotus.'

He ate, mechanically, just to fill the time of the waiter getting back with his alcohol. He made himself-- he made himself take a mental step back, ask himself if he was getting played. Not by Une, who was most definitely attempting it. By Duo.

Not consciously. He didn't think. He'd been the one-- Quat had been the one, virginal Quatre, to shove them at each other, and Trowa had been the one to bring sex into it. Hadn't he? Sex, yes. He'd been drunk, he'd been willing, eager, even, he'd gone to Duo's apartment. Call me, he'd said, hoped, expected, secure in his masculine charm, secure in the spark of connection they'd-- he'd, at least, had, had been sure he'd seen it in Duo's face. And Duo had called, had wanted to be with him, had just spent a week with no-one but him. Attachment--

The last few days, Duo had been... he thought, now, more than just someone enjoying an unusually imaginative sex party. He thought, now, of Duo right before they'd gone their separate ways, and how he'd thought Duo might even be trying to hold his hand. Getting attached. Or making it look like he was.

The beer came. He took it out of the waiter's hand before the guy could pour it into a glass, and drank straight from the bottle. The waiter made himself scarce.

He abandoned the pretence of remove and just asked for information. Une already knew she'd shaken him and he needed to know more than what he knew already. 'Who else?' he asked flatly.

Une turned away from him to examine a nearby cart of noodles. 'At least two Preventers,' she said, frowning as she decided against it. She pressed steepled hands to her chin, gazing at him. 'I've suspected him of becoming involved with some of his confidential informants. There's nothing in our bylaws that forbids it, and he's one of our more effective undercovers. He had a certain number of “adventures”, I suppose you could call it, when he relocated to San Francisco. Chaperoned, or perhaps initiated, by his partner at the time.'

'Partner like co-worker or--'

'Zechs Merquise.'

He waggled the beer at a waiter, maybe not the same waiter. He finished it in three swallows.

'Don't be so judgmental,' Une chided him, reaching across the table for the last of the rice cake. 'After all, Maxwell's hardly the only one to cross the political bedsheet. It was a tumultuous relationship, at any rate. Maxwell nearly quit Preventers over him. In fact I'd thought he had left for Mars, until I received a call from Burkwood Heights Substance Abuse Recovery Clinic, informing me he'd checked in with them instead.'

'Stop.' Trowa dug his thumb into the cold glass. His mouth tasted sour and dry, and his head felt tight, hot. Une shut up, chewing, just chewing like a damn cow, totally unconcerned with running Duo over on her way to hurting Trowa. Running over him and backing over just to be sure she got him. He'd been wrong. He didn't need to know this.

He had control over himself by the time someone showed up with his next beer. He sipped it, slowly, and set it aside half empty. He said, 'His last mission. You burned him.'

Une laid her chopsticks neatly across her plate. 'Yes,' she agreed.

'Why leave him out there. You stranded him on L2. He was almost killed and you didn't even provide him a fucking ride in from the colonies.'

'It was his call,' she said. 'He left the signal.'

That jived with Duo's report. He wanted more than that, more than Une's unrevealing expression. 'How'd he get back to Earth?'

'He has his own network here, and how he uses that to save his own skin is his business, so long as it doesn't jeopardise Preventers' operations.' Unsolicited, dishes of sesame seed balls and some kind of pudding arrived on their table, the waiter shrinking back from their chilly reception. Une took the pudding. 'He's good,' she said then. 'Better than you, in some ways. Better with people. He has more moral hang-ups than you do, but different people serve in different ways. Believe me when I say it disappointed me to think he was lost on L2. He has an important future with Preventers.'

'An important future,' Trowa repeated slowly. 'What's that mean.'

'I won't lead here forever. One day my political past will catch up with me, when the world changes enough.' Une gathered fruit and jelly on her golden spoon and lifted it to her lips. 'I'd once hoped Chang Wufei would be what Treize believed him to be, but whatever qualities he saw are not compatible with what Preventers have become. We need someone worldly enough to deal with the practicalities, to make compromises, to look human filth in the eye and allow it to exist so long as it serves a purpose. Chang will never do that, but Maxwell can.'

Trowa breathed. 'Does he know about your ambitions for him?'

'Why should he?' Une ate her pudding. 'I am many years away from retirement, and he's many years away from management track. He's made a good start, earning rank through merit. Earning the respect of people disinclined to work side by side with someone like him. By the time he's captained a Mobile Unit and proved a Gundam Pilot can assimilate, we'll see which personal obstacles stand in his way.'

Trowa finished his beer. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and threw it down. 'Let me know when you have another assignment for me. Keep me in the area for a while.'

Une only nodded at that, her eyes hooded. 'Pay in front,' she said.

He smiled tightly. 'Not today. Saving up. Deposit for a place, you know.'

That got her. Shock, and just a little nuclear edge of fury, before she suppressed it. Une tossed her hair over her shoulder, looked up at him with those chill brown eyes of hers. Curved her lips into a smile like she was carving marble. 'I'm glad you're taking it so well,' she said. Purred.

New gambit. He didn't know what it was, where she was going with it. He hesitated, didn't like that he hesitated, but he'd seen this woman threaten to level entire colonies and believed her capable of doing it. 'Taking what so well.'

She had a magazine in her purse. She'd come prepared, she'd come ready to hurt him, and some distant part of him not occupied with fond wishes for ammunition could admire what a stone cold bitch Une could be, to get her own way. She had the magazine ready to go in her purse, already turned to the right page, so all she had to do was put it on the table between them.

It was one of those celebrity monthlies, photographs of the relatively famous cut and pasted with blurbs excitedly speculating about weight, bad hair, bad breakups. And new couples. Like Quatre Raberba Winner and Relena Dorlian Peacecraft, spotted kissing at the L1 Metropolitan Opera.

He was on his feet. He didn't remember standing. His hands were numb, trying to button on his coat. His face was numb, too numb for expression, at least, so she didn't win anything out of him that way. She stirred her pudding, predatory stare on him.

'He believes,' Trowa rasped. 'Peace. The goals. The big ideas. Don't fuck with him, just because of me.'

'I have no intention of it.'

'Duo. I meant Duo.'

He could practically feel her bending the universe around him. Bending the universe to her will, and him with it.

'I believe we understand each other,' she said, and dismissed him.

 

**

 

He bought a copy of every magazine that had a picture of them.

It wasn't every day the former Queen of the World canoodled a former Gundam Pilot. It had caught a lot of attention. It had politics, it had sex, it had glamour. How long had it been going on? No-one knew. Anonymous sources contributed a variety of wild theories, half of which Trowa knew to be lies just based on the logistics of Quatre's schedule in the Ministry. But there they were, in the dark in a box seat at the Opera, leaning in for a kiss. Quatre's hand was in her hair. Trowa knew that touch, knew how electric it was to have Quat's hand on you that way, as if you were something precious, something sacred.

He drove, for hours. Through the city, out along the highway, into a traffic jam and out of it without registering any of it. When he came out of it enough to check his mobile, he found messages waiting for him. Duo. He turned the mobile off.

He was parked at the docks overlooking a barge unloading crates when he remembered the keys. There was something there, something not adding up about everything-- Duo. Something not adding up about Duo. Why now. Why now, when Duo had no reason to give a flying shit about him, when Duo was too smart, too smart by half to come back from the mission his file described and decide the next thing on his agenda was a week-long fuckfest with a man he hadn't seen for five years and hadn't been all that close to before that, simply because Quatre thought they'd be cute together--

He couldn't think. Couldn't think about Quatre.

Half the keys he couldn't identify. One he thought might be to a locker, and no-one normal put a gym locker key in a shoebox in a room they didn't use, so it might be a locker at the train depot, maybe, or an airport or shuttleport even. He could spend the rest of his life testing every locker labelled 233B and never find the right one, even assuming it was on Earth. Another set of keys was for a car, with an electronic fob, but it wasn't the same key, he didn't think, as what he'd seen in Duo's pocket on the ring with his apartment key. Who had this many keys? Maybe it was a fetish, or a hoarding complex. The safety deposit key, the safety deposit box key was the only one he thought might be easily traceable, had a serial number etched on it issued by a bank, and if the bank was in the area-- he couldn't remember how long Duo had lived here, but why carry a key with you to a box you couldn't access? You wouldn't. There were smarter ways to hold onto important things, easier ways to get at guns or documents or money or fake IDs and Duo hadn't been in the bedroom while Trowa had been there, which meant-- well, it was possible Duo had had it with him on L2 on his mission and put it back after, but he didn't think so. Wasn't sure, but the way Duo had reacted to Cuartero showing up at his place, that didn't seem fake. That had had the feel of a real panic, a real freak out. He thought. He didn't know what he thought now.

It took him a mere three hours to track down the bank. Providence had branches all the hell over the state, but only two in San Francisco. He didn't think about it. He just put the car in drive, and went.

His first guess was wrong, but the second bank did match the key to their inventory. He had badges he could have used, fake IDs of his own that wouldn't have linked him back to Preventers, but he went with a straightforward alternative and just bribed the teller with cash.

'The guy who owns this,' he asked, as the teller pulled the box for him and carried it to a little alcove for privacy. 'How often does he visit?'

'Never,' the teller answered, nervously checking the camera. 'Not since opening the account.'

Odd. Spoils of war? Trowa had managed to put away both money and information, but both of those had a half-life and tended to depreciate quickly as power changed hands at a higher level. If Duo had saved any personal mementos, it still didn't make much sense to put them in hiding and never check on them. Unless he was bribing someone, too, to keep his visits off the record.

'Leave,' Trowa told the teller. He handed over a baggie full of banknotes. 'I'll replace it when I go. I wasn't here.' He waited to be sure he was alone, checking the corridor to the safe room. He flexed his hands, and flipped back the box lid.

His first thought was that it was war spoils after all, and a creepy kind at that. Right on top was a pair of epaulettes, gold thread undimmed by a decade hidden away. A bunch of medals and ribbons denoting a dozen different campaigns, combat commemoration, valour. He sifted them slowly. A big folder full of documents at the bottom-- he pulled that out, intending to get reading, and heard the clunk. A gun, wrapped in a velvet bag. Interesting. A revolver. Bigger than standard Preventers issue, and an old model, an unnecessarily opulent gun, inlaid with pearl on the handle, soft scratched gold on the muzzle. Odder. Coins. A sheet of old coins, and a necklace-- real jewels, gemstones worth probably thousands, a damn impressive piece to be holding onto and the kind of piece that probably got harder to fence the more settled the world got. Romafeller may have fallen with the war, but stealing from the nobles of the world still had consequences. A glove. Just the one, worn old leather, soft as cotton, black that had browned with time and human touch.

He figured it out before he opened the folder. Had it confirmed with just a glance. Deeds. Property, some of it land, some of it stocks, bonds, securities. All from Milliardo Peacecraft to Duo Maxwell. And it was a fulsome tally. Not Winner money, but Duo was a rich man, if this was correct. Uncontested.

It couldn't be uncontested. It was-- Peacecraft. Sanq. They'd have gone to court over shit like this, would have fought to keep money like this within the kingdom's title. Merquise might have abdicated or just pretended to be dead long enough or who knew, but he wouldn't have total freedom to just sign over his personal fortune to some guy he'd used to fuck.

If it had been just that. Une had said Duo had almost quit for Merquise. Gone to Mars.

What did it say about Duo. What did it matter, that a man who had looked Trowa in the eye and said _I still want to win_ would keep a crapload of-- Merquise had taken off for Mars, what, five years ago? Six years ago? Ancient history, when you measured life by plagues and wars and bad missions where your fucking command abandoned you and you only made it home by the skin of your teeth. It had all been there in Duo's report. Trowa didn't know if even he could have done it, utterly without resources. But Duo had the resources, sitting right here. Why deny himself?

He bought a bottle of bourbon at a liquor store up the road from the bank and drank half of it back at the hotel, watching the activity by the pool out of his window as the day got long and night fell. Laying out the reasons for himself, logical as he could be, not sure logic was the answer he needed for this, not sure he could be cold when what he felt in his gut was anything but.

When he'd been fifteen and Quatre had attacked him outside Lunar, too many crazy things happening at once, his Vayette exploding around him... he still had only imperfect memories of that time, inevitably intercut with how it had played out afterward. The long, cold drift through Space with just the slow hiss of oxygen in his mask, the sure knowledge of his death. Quatre in his arms, soft warm sheets tangled around them, the blue of Quatre's eyes, the silky gold of his hair against Trowa's fingers. I'm sorry, so sorry, Quat had said, a thousand times, and Trowa had let the memories go, had never tried to hold onto them, more accurately. He'd never felt anything about it, had never needed to. What he'd felt had always come in snatches like deja vu, a gust of chill down his spine. He'd lived, that was enough. There were no reasons. You made the best decisions you were capable of making, moment to moment, for the immediate reason in front of you. Quat had lost a father and tried to destroy everything in reach. Trowa had lost Quat and had just-- drifted. Fetched up against Preventers and let that direct him, glad enough, maybe, to know he had a purpose for however long Une saw use in him.

Which made him no different than Heero or Wufei, did it. That was an emotional trap he drifted into all too easily, a sense of his own superiority. He chose, didn't he? He wanted to believe he chose. He'd wanted to believe they didn't, that they let others determine too much for them, that the world ordered itself around them and yet here he was, no better. No worse. If he'd admired anything about Quat it had been his independence, the shelter of his own idealism. He did nothing but what he believed was right, even if it was sheer damn idiocy by any logical way of looking at the universe. Like Duo.

Yes, like Duo. Who'd turned Trowa down for all the right reasons, let him in at arms' length, and needed him only when he hadn't anyone else left to go to. And would walk away if Trowa let him, maybe a little burned, maybe a little sore, but Duo would survive him.

Would survive near anything. The report had been bleak. Sketching in the details meant a fair dose of imagination, it was that sparse, but Trowa had written enough of them himself to guess at the blanks between the typeface. Two Preventers, undercover, on L2, a warren of a colony on good days, and there weren't many good days in the colonies even now. They'd presumably sent Duo to navigate it, Duo because he was a native, Duo because he'd know to do exactly what he'd done. When their identities had been blown, Duo had got them out. That was one of those blanks-- all Duo had reported was that he'd sneaked them onto a Sweeper shuttle Earthbound-- no easy task. There were no places to hide on a shuttle, no shelter to hide in that wasn't visible to crew or safe from either oxygen or temperature when a ship fell through the gravity well, so it meant a bribe of some kind, but Preventers had already burnt them on L2 and that meant no money, no friends who'd answer a call for help. But the other agent had been alive til they'd landed on Earth, Vanderberg Air Base down the central coast of California. Somewhere between there and San Francisco they'd been attacked. They'd been beaten, on the run, and the other agent had been killed. Shot, Duo's report read, body unrecoverable.

And Duo had dragged himself in, broken arm, broken ribs, and made contact with Preventers, but waited. Waited for Une to fucking acknowledge him, waited to even test the safety of his own apartment. Safehouse with local Confidential Informant. If there was fallout, it hadn't hit yet. But there'd been someone in his apartment. And Duo had answered the phone in Spanish, a mobile phone that didn't belong to Preventers. He had help, all right. He'd come to Trowa, not for aid, not for guns, not for money. Just sex. Just-- a friend, maybe. Not scared. Not Duo. But not all right, and needing a place where that was safe.

It took him almost the rest of that bottle of bourbon to realise-- he was getting the same thing out of it. He'd been thinking that for months, hadn't he. A string of shots fired for Preventers that didn't make sense to him, a world growing around him that didn't welcome him or want him in it, a life made up of hotels and city horizons and beds that didn't belong to him, and he'd been functional, fine, but not-- all right. Content with it, but he'd never not been that, had only very rarely been in a place where he hadn't seen the next steps coming, the immediate reason in front of him to keep walking, but-- not all right. There was more out there, and for just a minute there with Duo he'd almost had it.

A good thing. Maybe a thing that would last a while, if he worked at it.

If he didn't fuck it up, get himself into a spiral where he suspected every damn thing and let the mysteries eat at him and let Une put it into his head that she could control him like a puppet, make him dance for no better reason than that she could. It was time to choose.

 

**

 

He knocked at Duo's door again. 'Will you fucking answer?' he called. 'I know you're in there. Your car is downstairs.'

Duo took his effing time at it. Trowa heard the lock click back, and waited impatiently; even then, Duo was another thirty seconds to actually opening the door, and when he did he stood squarely in the way, blocking Trowa from entering. He said, 'What.'

'What's what mean.' Trowa hefted the box he held. 'I brought dinner.'

'You didn't answer your phone for three days and you drop in unannounced with cheap pizza.' Duo's mouth turned down. 'Charmed.'

'I can probably come up with an explanation if it means that much to you.'

Duo's eyes were flat, level with Trowa's. Then, weirdly, the fight went out of him. 'I guess I earned that,' he muttered. Listlessly he left the door wide, went inside. Puzzled by that, Trowa followed him in. He dropped the pizza on the galley bar, made sure the door locked again behind them. 'There's beer in the fridge if you want it.'

'Okay.' He checked. It was the same brand as what he'd had at the hotel. It hadn't been there before. Bought special for him? He popped the caps on two and followed Duo to the couch. 'I brought in your mail.'

'How'd you get my key?'

'Don't be suspicious. I met the mailman going in.' Trowa handed over the bundle of envelopes with the bottle. 'You're being weird.'

'I'm being annoyed.'

'Because I didn't call you.' Trowa drank his own beer, watching him. When he moved a lock of Duo's hair out of the way, Duo's skin was warm. 'Baby.'

Duo rolled his eyes at that. But it seemed Trowa was forgiven. Duo kissed him, sliding against him tongue and soft breath and softer eyelashes, bony knee digging into Trowa's hip until Duo bopped him with a mild fist. They drank in easy quiet, then, Duo's hand in his lap fondling gently, without purpose, his on Duo's shoulder just playing with the collar of Duo's shirt, drifting down the open triangle of his throat, over the comforting throb of Duo's pulse.

Eventually Duo attended to the mail in his lap. He made separate piles of everything, store catalogues and pennysavers in one, bills another, a third and fourth for categories Trowa didn't try to decipher. But the one that Trowa had carefully buried toward the bottom of the pile stilled his sorting. It had a return address matching the place Duo had gone, the day Trowa had followed him. A free clinic.

A faint swallow was Duo's only reaction. He flexed the fingers on the casted arm. Slit the envelope open, a neat tear on the side, and tugged out the folded sheets inside. If he noticed that Trowa had already steamed opened and resealed the envelope, he didn't show. His eyes moved rapidly, too rapidly, over the contents of the letter. Got to the bottom and turned the page, to the test results. He sucked in a deep breath, and let it out in a little wobble.

Then he looked up. He extended the trifold to Trowa.

'Oh,' Trowa said, cautiously surprised by that. He'd assumed Duo wouldn't share it-- he'd taken the precaution of reading it ahead of time for that reason. But he took the letter now, rubbed a quick thumb over his nose. 'What is it?'

'Guess we don't have to use condoms any more. I'm clean.'

'Um. Yeah.' He couldn't read Duo's face. Emotionally charged, it had to be, but Duo looked almost serene, suddenly, calm as marble. 'Your mission?' Trowa asked him. 'Or was Johnny just that grody.'

Duo snorted. 'He's not really that bad, you know. Just kind of a dick.'

'If you say so.' Trowa chewed it over, wondering at him. He took the envelope from Duo, and returned the letter to it. Touched the yellowed spot on Duo's lip where the split had almost entirely faded, now, and thought about how it had probably got there. About how Duo had got home from L2, a place not known for its ringing embrace of humanity, and thought, too, that survival was barely half of it. He said, 'Duo, I'm sorry.'

It was there, for just a flicker of a moment, a shadow in Duo's eyes. Duo breathed. 'Answer your phone,' he said. 'Next time.'

'I will.' He put their beers on the carpet, out of the way. 'We'll drink those later. Bring the pizza. There's a place we need to go to.'

'I'm not really up for being social.'

'Not a problem.'

'I'm not dressed for going out.'

'Definitely not a problem.' He stood. 'You can drive, if you feel the need.'

Duo cocked his head. 'You're not a romantic, so that's out. And it's not my birthday, so I'm safe that way.'

'You can find out by coming the hell along.'

How Duo had it in him to trust, Trowa didn't know. But he did. Or maybe he was just really hungry. Trowa did, after all, have the pizza.

The strip mall was nothing special, except for being closed after nightfall. Trowa parked at the far end, beyond the edge of a streetlamp, and reached to the backseat for the food. 'You ready?'

'For what?' Duo looked curiously, not at the stores, but at Trowa.

'A little B&E.'

'Breaking and entering?'

'You used to be pretty handy with a lockpick. I wouldn't think a cast would slow you down any more than a pair of magnetic cuffs.'

'Or a badge?' But Duo was grinning, all sharp teeth. 'Quat made you sound like a slightly more successful criminal than that.'

'He'd just be embarrassed to associate with a petty burglar.' Trowa exited the car, and on his side Duo followed. 'You don't care,' Trowa said, over the hood of the car. 'About what I do. The badge didn't stop you from fucking me three ways to Sunday.'

'Five,' Duo corrected him archly. 'I'm a Preventer, not a cop. You don't start a war or steal a Gundam, we have nothing to talk about.' Trowa mimed doffing a cap, and Duo laughed. 'I am allowed to wonder why you want to rob a pet store?'

'Not the pet store.' Trowa pointed. 'That one.'

'Sleep E-Zee?'

'No camera in back.' Trowa led the way through the tiny back lot, where large trash bins and a distinct smell of rotting pet waste made for unpleasant tourism. The red light on the lone security camera had gone out, no interference from Trowa. Duo noted it, but probably suspected him anyway. His eyes lingered on Trowa, and he walked a few steps behind, at least til they reached the mattress store's back door. Trowa gestured him forward. 'After you,' he said.

'No doubt.' Duo still had picks-- Trowa had been sure he would-- hidden in the braid like hairpins. He crouched to examine the lock, the cast no impediment at all with a lock so uncomplicated. 'I can still run faster'n you,' Duo warned him, just as he sprung the lock. 'It's probably wired.'

'Think you can handle it?'

An alarm did go off, a second after the door opened. Duo was inside and briskly examining the back wall, checking unhurriedly, thoroughly. When he chose a shelving unit, Trowa helped him move it, lifting rather than dragging. They only moved it a few inches. Duo popped open the transformer cover and flicked off the switches for the back half of the store. Then used the little knife in his sleeve as a screwdriver, unscrewing the cover from the alarm module by the door, popping the battery connection from the circuit board, and cutting all sound with the power. Less than a minute from start to finish.

Duo smirked back. 'We'll put it back the way we found it before we leave, wipe the prints. If the alarm company mentions the connection break, it'll look like the transformer's fault and a battery drain, not a break-in.'

Trowa kissed him. 'Nice,' he said.

'A little elementary. They've only got mattresses in here, not crown jewels.'

'Yeah, but I don't need crown jewels. I do need a mattress.' He pulled Duo by the sleeve through the back room and past a small stock area and out onto the main floor. 'Go to.'

Duo was blinking at him in the dark. 'What?'

'It's not the kind of thing you buy without testing it out. So test some out. I like softer, personally. You?'

Duo had stopped walking. Trowa faced him. The shop was really too dark to make out the entirety of his expression, minus a few dimly glowing lights beyond the front window bays, but he didn't really need to see to know. He could feel the keen edge of Duo's stare.

'What?' he mimicked. 'We don't all sleep on couches, you know. I think the hotel would notice if I tried to burgle their bed.'

'You're staying?'

'Do I have a reason to?'

Duo pulled him down by an earlobe. The scrape of his teeth along Trowa's jaw was electric, a jolt right to his groin. He grabbed Duo by the ass, dug his hand down the inside of Duo's tight jeans. 'God,' he whispered into Duo's hair. 'Tell me you wear these pants just for me.'

'Who else appreciates them as much as you do?' Duo laughed, a soft rough burr that Trowa tried to suck out of the column of his throat. 'Did you sleep with me just so I'd help you move? I would've done it just for pizza.'

'I'll remember that for next time.' He only barely had the reach for it, fingering Duo in the close confines of the seat of his jeans, but Duo went Ohh and curved into him, close enough that Trowa could feel him going hard. Trowa popped the button on his jeans, fought that zip that didn't want to obey him, and knelt to strip Duo. He skimmed his palms up Duo's thighs, over the bulge in his white underpants. He opened his mouth against hot cotton, and then Duo was laughing as Trowa scooped him up and tossed him down onto the nearest mattress.

'Someone might see in the windows,' Duo groaned, rolling over him and under him and squirming out of his shirt, shaking the arm with the cast until Trowa helped with the sleeve. 'I'm not really into exhibitionism. Specially for cops and their torches.'

'No-one will see.' He pushed at Duo's legs, scraped his tongue up the hair of Duo's groin and swallowed him, leaving him damp and bobbing in the cold store air. He crawled up Duo's body and moulded himself to Duo's long limbs, skin on skin. 'So how do you like this one? Not too firm...'

'Kinda springy.' Duo's bright laugh became a moan when Trowa fingered him again. 'You bring-- you bring stuff?'

'Courtesy of Century City Productions Limited.' He made a splay-armed grab for his bag, abandoned back on the floor behind him. He dumped the contents on the mattress with them, swearing to himself he'd never take money from that client again if he could just get a subscription to the product. He dribbled lube on a curved pink vibrator and cranked it on. It hummed and trembled as he rolled it up Duo's calf, inner thigh, over his belly. Duo craned his neck to see, then just shuddered and fell limp when Trowa slid it into him. 'Good?'

'God. Good.'

He lay beside Duo, then pulled Duo close to him, back to his chest, and stroked Duo as he would have himself. Duo fumbled to touch him, but Trowa didn't mind his inattention. Watching Duo unravel was worth it. Sweat smeared his shoulder as Duo thrashed his head, his chest heaving in ragged gasps. He came on Trowa's hand with a hot spatter.

Duo lay there, just the buzz of the vibrator still going, an occasional shiver wracking him. He flopped, curled around Trowa. His lips left wet impressions everywhere. They kissed, slow, sloppy. Duo dragged low, biting everywhere he found-- shoulders, nipples, navel, hipbones-- when he swallowed, he didn't stop. Swallow after swallow after swallow, until Trowa came with a cry that wrung itself out of him.

'Shit.' He managed a laugh for himself. 'You make me wish I was the only guy you'd ever been with.'

He recalled why that might not be a terribly sensitive remark the second it was out of his mouth. Duo didn't give him time to regret it. He was on his feet, dragging Trowa with him, and they ran naked to a bed halfway across the store and landed on it with a tangle of arms and legs and cocks already half-mast again. He ditched the vibrator to the floor and pulled Duo's ass to his hips, grinding until he was hard enough to fill Duo himself, bending him over the mattress edge and fucking as hard as Duo let him, then as sweetly as he'd ever known he could. He came first, already spent from the blow job, and tottered after Duo to another mattress, sprawling. Duo laughed at him, from somewhere off in the dark. Trowa didn't try to find him, and the mystery solved itself when Duo returned with the vibrator. Trowa ground his teeth as Duo fed it into him, so slow it felt like it took ten minutes. He could feel it all the way to his toes by the time it was seated in him, a slick juddering quake. Duo was there, his mouth tight latched to Trowa's, climbing atop him, seating himself on Trowa's cock, rocking, rocking with him, and Trowa wrapped a hand around him, held him down, and let him ride to completion.

An age later, Duo lifted his head from Trowa's shoulder. He scraped sweaty hair from his eyes. He said, 'I like this one.'

Trowa cleared his throat. 'Whuz?'

'Mattress.' Duo did him the favour of restoring his sanity and turned off the vibrator with a twist to the base. 'I like this one,' he said.

'Oh. Okay.'

Duo kissed him. It was a lingering, thoughtful kind of a kiss, a different character than the sexytimes kisses he'd been dispensing before. Trowa cupped the back of Duo's head, threaded his fingers into the base of the braid. They came up for air when Duo accidentally clunked him with the cast, but they laughed about it, and Duo settled beside him, fitted comfortably to his shoulder.

Trowa flung the vibrator across the store. It clanged and skittered across the tile, rolling to a stop somewhere unseen. 'They'll find that in the morning,' Duo murmured. 'Along with all the jizz on their mattresses.'

'Bet you a tenner the employees did it long before us.'

'Ew.' But Duo seemed in no hurry to move. It was, actually, a pretty decent mattress. Even though they were facing the wrong way from the foam pillows at the head. 'You're really going to move here?' Duo asked then.

'I guess so.' Trowa stretched a kink out of his neck. 'If you don't mind it.'

'No.' From the corner of his eyes he could see Duo was looking at him. He blinked up at the dark blob of the ceiling. 'I guess I just didn't see you as the type.'

'Maybe it's time to be the type. I'm getting too old to live out of hotels all the time.' He closed his eyes, and opened them after a count to ten. He said, 'Duo. You don't have to tell me, but-- if it's not safe for you, you know I would help.'

There was a long silence from the body next to him. Long enough that he began to regret giving voice to what seemed, now, overtly sentimental, and not quite exactly what he'd meant, and maybe condescending, too, implying Duo needed any kind of help from him to get out of whatever mess he was in. Or had been in. He cleared his throat again, and added, 'I could call Quat for you, if it's too embarrassing.' That was worse, douchey in a way he didn't want to be, ruining the moment, but he must have landed closer to the right thing, because Duo only huffed, and shrugged against him.

There'd been a time when he'd believed he was reasonably good at interpreting other human beings. He'd considered himself apart from them, by nature or nuture-- lack thereof-- but he'd felt he understood them, their motivations, their desires, their instincts. He'd been able to move through their world because he knew it was bullshit, all of it. Maybe that was what Une had been preaching at him. Belief was for people who were capable of it. Reasons were for people who could only watch, analyse, and think they comprehended the data. She'd manipulated him so easily because he'd been wary of falling into someone like Duo, someone so unafraid to feel. Someone who'd come right up to the barrier of Trowa's armour and known not to try to get in, but had, anyway, found all the chinks, crept in on him.

Trowa said, 'I know about Quat and-- her. The princess.'

Duo was quiet. His hand on Trowa's chest just lay there, still. Eventually, he said, 'I don't think she's technically a princess anymore.'

'You know what I mean.'

'Yeah.'

'I didn't know about them. Before. Quat might have assumed I did. But I didn't.' He closed his eyes again, and let them stay closed this time. 'Even if that's why he set us up, it's not why I-- anything. Okay.'

'Okay.'

'Do you believe me?'

'Would you lie?'

Honestly asked. He appreciated that Duo was smart enough to ask it, appreciated that Duo wasn't asking it to trap him in a bad answer. 'I'll have to lie to you, sometimes,' he said. 'Just like you won't always be able to tell me everything. We know that going in.'

'I don't need to always know the total truth,' Duo said. 'I'm not a teenager any more. I don't want to live like one. It either means something or it doesn't, it... I made mistakes with people before, people who deserved more out of me...'

For the first time he followed Duo on one of those mood changes. He felt it, because it was in him, too, not just Duo. Sombre, and warranted, maybe, because they arrived at this point with a mutual load of history that wasn't easy to explain, would never match up exactly, would never not hurt. He'd got almost there with what he'd said about Quatre, and Duo accepted it. Duo was almost there, now, and it hovered, those things hidden in plain sight in the bedroom Duo didn't go in, the art, the clothes, the gifts that had to have come from Zechs Merquise, a man who'd vanished without much trace years ago when Duo had turned on a dime and made himself a man that even Une admired, a man with a future, not just a past. A man with a life that didn't include a destiny, except what Duo made of himself, and in that moment, listening to Duo try to say it, Trowa found his chest tight, a solid weight of real understanding holding him pinned in place.

Duo's voice was dry as dust. He said, 'I... I haven't always been...'

Trowa interrupted. 'Duo,' he said. 'I don't need to know. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.'

Duo clammed up. Maybe he should have said _not ready_ , not _don't want_ , because that was closer to what he'd meant, that they might be able to say things like that one day, but he didn't feel like it had to be pushed on either side, didn't-- didn't plan on rushing a confession about the keys he still had to return to Duo's apartment, the things he'd seen in the bedroom and the bank, but he thought about Duo's eyes when he'd read that letter, those test results, Duo just handing him the letter to read and he thought, it might be nice, one day, to be with someone who didn't have secrets.

But they weren't those people, not yet. They both had curtains that had to remain drawn for a while longer. Someday would have to be enough. It was, he thought, enough.

He propped himself up on an elbow. Duo looked up at him, those eyes just a little too big in his face saying just a little too much, holding it all in with mirrors of dark purple. Trowa stroked a finger down his jawline.

'Move in with me,' he said.

Duo's lips parted. 'What?'

'Move in with me.'

'You don't even have a place yet. You don't-- why. We don't-- what if the sex gets old?'

'We'd probably be dead,' Trowa predicted. 'I know there's reasons why not. Fuck 'em.'

'That's not a persuasive argument!' He nudged a knee at Duo's groin, and Duo batted him away. 'No dirty pool. Don't play me.'

'I'm not.' Trowa dropped his eyes, chewing the inside of his cheek. 'I get why you were so freaked out about having some guy in your place. Before.'

'What—' Duo inhaled, and let him finish. 'That was just being paranoid. Dumb.'

'It wasn't. The kind of lives we have, it feels like everything's always different and there's nothing you can nail to the floor. Except for ourselves and our own little corner of shit when we finally get it together. Someone fucked with yours, and it scared you. I get that. But I don't think that's—' He wasn't saying it how he wanted it said, and the lack of words frustrated him. He shook his head.

'What,' Duo mouthed softly.

'It's not the change that's frightening.' He pulled at a scrap of dirty gauze coming loose from Duo's cast, til Duo's fingers curled over his, stopped him. 'It's not enough change that's scary. You said it before. Sphere's a shitty place. The stories are all the same and a lot of them are bad. The golden prince and the pretty pink princess grow up and get married and that's a good one, but it's old as time. People like you and me, our stories are old as time, too. We get used up and worn out and we die young. So maybe we change the story.'

'I thought I was too old to be surprised any more,' Duo said. His lips quirked. 'Do you snore?'

'Do you?'

'I don't need you to be more than you're ready for. But don't ask me to do this and then say you're not stepping to the plate. I'm too tired for bullshit, Tro.'

'I think maybe I am, too.' He heard that name on review, though. Tro. He said, 'You like me.'

Duo's smile was rainbows and razorblades. He threw back his head as he laughed. 'God, I'm in for it, aren't I.'

Not the only damn one. Not the only damn one at all.


End file.
